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Noble Thoughts 

of 

The World's Greatest Minds 

Edited by Dana Estes, M»A» 



** They arc never alone who are 
accompanied by noble thoughts/' 

— Sir Philip Sidney. 



.E7 



THE NOBLE THOUGHT 
SERIES 

Edited by DANA ESTES, M. A. 



U The Noble Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius 
2. The Noble Thoughts of John Ruskin 

Other works in preparation 



Noble Thoughts 

of 

The World^s Greatest Minds 

Edited by Dana Estes, M, A. 




** They are never alone who are 
accompanied by noble thoughts." 
— Sir Philip Sidney. 



The Thoughts of 



^(obii Ruskin 



Edited fay 

Dana Estes^ M«A. 




Boston ^ Dana Estcs & 
Company ^ Publishers 



Tl? 



uertARY of OONuSEfiS 
twuOoptes ttece.<vt30 

AUG . 8 )yo8 

COP Y Q. ^ 



si. 



1 



Copyright, igo8 
By Dana Estes & Company 



^// rights reserved 



COLONIAL PRESS 
EUctrotyPed and Printed by C. H. Simonds A* Co, 

Boston, U. S.A. 



INTRODUCTION 

No apology need be offered by the editor for 
presenting to the public another volume of selec- 
tions from the Works of John Rttskin* Those 
heretofore compiled have been generally addressed 
to the admirers of certain special forms of literary 
work. The Noble Thoughts have been selected 
at random throughout the whole works, wherever 
any concisely expressed idea of an elevated and 
practical character has hit the fancy of the editor. 
In the strenuous times in which we live, such 
compilations often become the companions of 
those who would not otherwise avail themselves 
of the gems of thought scattered through the vol- 
umes, and in some cases, may serve as an intro- 
duction to, and cause the reading of many of the 
works from which they are culled. 

John Ruskin was bom in London in J 81 9, and 
died at Brantwood in 1900. He came into gen- 
eral notice with ** Modern Painters ** and other 
treatises on the fine arts; in later life he was best 
known as a lecturer and essayist on ethics, edu- 
cation, and philanthropy. He was born in Lon- 
don, but both parents were connected with 
Edinburgh. At Oxford he won the Newdigate 
prize with a poem on ** Salsette and Elephanta '' 
(J 839), and wrote a series of articles in ** London's 



Architectural Magazine *' on ** The Poetry of 
Architecture," under the pen name of **Kata 
Ph«sin/' Shortly afterward he began to write 
his first important books, ** Modern Painters*' 
(Vol. !♦, 1843), in which a wealth of curious 
artistic and scientific information was set forth 
with such literary skill as to attract immediate 
and increasing attention. He had long been an 
admirer of the pictures of Turner, and impatient 
at the popular misunderstanding of what he 
conceived to be the painter's aims in his later 
work. This book was intended to be mainly 
a defence and an appreciation of Turner, and was 
a book of real force and originality. It showed 
the beauties of nature and the claims of art in 
a light which had never before been cast upon 
them; it created a new department of literature — 
the popular and picturesque treatment of aesthetics. 
The second volume followed in J 846, discussing 
the faculty of imagination, and appreciating the 
great religious painters of Florence and Venice. 
In 1856 the third and fourth volumes appeared, 
with further analysis of Turner and the pre- 
Raphaelite school, and of natural phenomena in 
their relation to art; and in J 860 the series was 
closed with Vol. V. Meanwhile Ruskin's interest 
in architecture had produced " The Seven Lamps 
of Architecture'' (1849) and ''The Stones of 
Venice " (Vol. I., I85I; Vols. II. and III., 1853). 
These books were not merely a plea for Gothic 
forms in building, but an attempt to trace the 
conditions of artistic craftsmanship, which the 
author found in the social system of the middle 
ages. This line of thought was partly developed 
vi 



in ** Lectures on Architectare and Painting/' 
given at Edinburgh in J 853; in ** The Political 
Economy of Art ** — lectures at Manchester in 
J857; and in '' The Two Paths/' in J859; and it 
led him on from art history and art criticism to 
the didactic and philanthropic utterances of his 
later days. When the pre-Raphaelites came into 
notice^ Ruskin took up their cause, and promoted 
it both with his purse and his pen* Millais and 
Rossetti were at one time his close companions, 
and with Holman Hunt and Burne- Jones he formed 
life-long friendships. His literary associates in 
early days were Samuel Rogers, Miss Mitford, 
Coventry Patmore, J. G. Lockhart, the Brownings^ 
and from \^5l onward Thomas Carlyle, whom he 
looked up to as his master. Carlyle's influence 
contributed to develop his range of thought from 
art to social and economic studies. Another 
motive was given by his share in the practical 
philanthropy of the Working Men's College (Great 
Ormond Street, London), founded by F. D. 
Maurice and his circle. Ruskin undertook the 
art department, and carried it on with energy 
from 1854 to \S5S. His '* Notes on the Acad- 
emy" and other exhibitions (t 855-9) were 
widely read, and often made or marred the for- 
tunes of artists. "When ** Modern Painters " was 
finished he lived for a time at Mornex, near Geneva. 
At Chamonix, in J 860, he wrote the papers called 
''Unto this Last"; and in J 862, at Mornex, 
**Munera Pulveris." These attempts to formu- 
late a theory of political economy more in accord- 
ance with ideal morality were ill received at the 
time, and his various notes on geology and min- 

vix 



cralogy were destiltory and unconvincing. In De- 
cember, J864t John Ruskin addressed Manchester 
audiences on the «se of books and the influence of 
women, and published the discourses as ** Sesame 
and Lilies ** (J 865). This event marked the open- 
ing of a new period of activity, in which he gained 
great popularity as a lecturer on ethics and gen- 
eral culture. His lectures were partly sermons, 
partly object-lessons illustrated with drawings 
and other exhibits. They were addressed mainly 
to the young, but were always full of suggestive 
thought, curious information, and a strong emo- 
tional and personal appeal. ** Sesame and Lilies ** 
was followed by ** The Ethics of the Dust ** (1866), 
^'The Crown of Wild Olive'' (J 866), and *' The 
Queen of the Air '* (1869), all lectures; and ** Time 
and Tide by Wear and Tyne ** (J 867), a series of 
letters giving his ideal of social institutions. In 
1868 and 1869 he returned to his studies of archi- 
tecture at Abbeville and Amiens, Verona and 
Venice, and lectured upon the ancient buildings; 
but the publication of these lectures was prevented 
by his election in 1869 to the Slade professorship 
of fine art at Oxford. ** Lectures on Art ** and 
'^Aratra Pentelici '* were given in J 870, '* Lec- 
tures on Landscape ** in 1 87 J, ** The Eagle's Nest'' 
and ** Ariadne Florentina " in J 872, ** Love's 
Meinie"and ^*VaI d' Arno " in J873; while at 
the same time he was writing his monthly ** Letters 
to the "Working Men of England," under the title 
of ** Fors Clavigera." In \Z7\ he bought a cottage 
— ^Brantwood, on Coniston Water — and made it 
his headquarters. Early in 1876 he was re- 
elected Slade professor for a third term ; but at 
viii 



the end of J 879 he resigned it, and spent the next 
fotir years chiefly at Coniston, occupied in work 
for his St. George's Guild. This was an asso- 
ciation for the purpose of holding land on which 
certain rttles were to be enforced for the benefit 
of the laborers (not a colony), and for general 
educational and social schemes, among which the 
St* George's (Raskin) Museum at Sheffield was 
the most successfuh Ruskin had already initiated 
schemes for the better housing of the working 
classes in Marylebone, London. Other experi- 
ments of his were the model tea-shop, road-making 
as a substitute for athletic games at Oxford, and 
cultivation of moorland at Coniston; also the 
publication of his own works. He founded several 
small museums in schools and at Coniston; pro- 
moted art classes and home industries — notably 
the hand-spinning and weaving of linen; and re- 
introduced the May Queen festival at several 
schools. In 1883 he was again re-elected Slade 
professor at Oxford, and lectured on ** The Art 
of England *' and next year on ** The Pleasures 
of England.*' He resigned partly on account of 
iU-health, but chiefly because the university had 
voted to allow vivisection, to which he strongly 
objected. Thereafter he wrote little more except- 
ing chapters of autobiography, entitled ** Pras- 
terita" (1885-9), from which the following 
extracts have been taken^— 

My father began business as a wine merchant, 
with no capital, and a considerable amount of 
debts bequeathed him by my grandfather. He 
accepted the bequest, and paid them all before he 

ix 



began to lay by anything for himself^ for which 
his best friends called him a fool, and I, without 
expressing any opinion as to his wisdom, which 
I knew in such matters to be at least equal to 
mine, have written on the granite slab over his 
grave that he was an ** entirely honest merchant/' 

Years went on, and I came to be four or five 
years old: he could command a post-chaise and 
pair for two months in the summer, by help of 
which, with my mother and me, he went the round 
of his country customers. I saw all the high- 
roads, and most of the cross ones, of England and 
"Wales, and great part of lowland Scotland, as far 
as Perth, where every other year we spent the 
whole summer; and I used to read the ** Abbot ** 
at Kinross and the ** Monastery *' in Glen Farg, 
which I confused with ** Glendearg,*' and thought 
that the White Lady had as certainly lived by the 
streamlet in that glen of the Ochils, as the Queen 
of Scots in the island of Loch Leven* 

It happened also, which was the real cause of 
the bias of my after life, that my father had a 
rare love of pictures. I use the word ^*rare*' 
advisedly, having never met with another instance 
of so innate a faculty for the discernment of true 
art, up to the point possible without actual prac- 
tice. Accordingly, wherever there was a gallery 
to be seen, we stopped at the nearest town for 
the night; and in reverentest manner I thus saw 
nearly all the noblemen's houses in England; not 
indeed myself at that age caring for the pictures, 
but much for castles and ruins, feeling more and 
more, as I grew older, the healthy delight of 
uncovetous admiration, and perceiving, as soon 

X 



as I could perceive any political truth at all, that 
it was probably much happier to live in a small 
house, and have "Warwick Castle to be astonished 
at, than to live in "Warwick Castle, and have noth- 
ing to be astonished atj but that, at all events, it 
would not make Brunswick Square in the least 
more pleasantly habitable, to puU "Warwick Castle 
down. And, at this day, though I have kind 
invitations enough to visit America, I could not, 
even for a couple of months, live in a country so 
miserable as to possess no castles. 

My mother had, as she afterwards told me, 
solemnly devoted me to God before I was born; in 
imitation of Hannah* ** Devoting me to God ** 
meant, as far as my mother knew herself what she 
meant, that she would try to send me to college, 
and make a clergyman of me: and I was accord- 
ingly bred for ** the Church/* My father, who — 
rest be to his soul — had the exceedingly bad habit 
of yielding to my mother in large things and 
taking his own way in little ones, allowed me, 
without saying a word, to be thus withdrawn 
from the sherry trade as an unclean thing; not 
without some pardonable participation in my 
mother's ultimate views for me. For, many and 
many a year afterwards, I remember, while he 
was speaking to one of our artist friends, who 
admired Raphael, and greatly regretted my en- 
deavors to interfere with that popular taste, — 
while my father and he were condoling with each 
other on my having been impudent enough to 
think I could tell the public about Turner and 
Raphael, — instead of contenting myself, as I 
ought, with explaining the way of their souls' 

xi 



salvation to them — and what an amiable clergy- 
man was lost in me, — **Yes," said my father, 
with tears in his eyes — (trtie and tender tears as 
ever father shed) — **He would have been a 
bishop/* 

Luckily for me, my mother, tinder these distinct 
impressions of her own duty, and with such latent 
hopes of my future eminence, took me very early 
to church; where, in spite of my quiet habits, 
and my mother's golden vinaigrette, always in- 
dulged to me there, and there only, with its lid 
unclasped that I might see the wreathed open 
pattern above the sponge, I found the bottom of 
the pew so extremely dull a place to keep quiet 
in (my best story-books being also taken away 
from me in the morning), that — as I have some- 
where said before — the horror of Sunday used 
even to cast its prescient gloom as far back in 
the week as Friday — and all the glory of Monday, 
with church seven days removed again, was no 
equivalent for it. 

I arrived at some abstract in my own mind of 
the Rev* Mr. Howelfs sermons; and occasionally — 
in imitation of him, preached a sermon at home 
over the red sofa cushions; — this performance being 
always called for by my mother's dearest friends, 
as the great accomplishment of my childhood. 
The sermon was — I believe — some eleven words 
long — very exemplary, it seems to me, in that 
respect — and I still think must have been the 
purest gospel, for I know it began with ** People, 
be good.*' 

I was never permitted for an instant to hope, 
or even imagine, the possession of such things as 

zii 



one saw in toy-shops* I had a bunch of keys to 
play witht as long as I was capable only of pleasure 
in what glittered and jingled; as I grew older, I 
had a cart, and a ball; and when I was five or 
six years old, two boxes of well-cut wooden bricks* 
"With these modest, but I still think entirely 
sufficient possessions, and being always summarily 
whipped if I cried, did not do as I was hidf or 
tumbled on the stairs, I soon attained serene and 
secure methods of life and motion. 

The group, of which our house was the quarter, 
consisted of two precisely similar partner-couples 
of houses, — gardens and all to match; still the 
two highest blocks of building seen from Norwood 
on the crest of the ridge; which, even within the 
time I remember, rose with no stinted beauty of 
wood and lawn above the Dulwich fields. 

The house itself, three-storied, with garrets 
above, commanded, in those comparatively smoke- 
less days, a very notable view from its upper 
windows, of the Norwood hills on one side, and 
the winter sunrise over them; and of the valley 
of the Thames, with Windsor in the distance, on 
the other, and the summer sunset over these. 
It had front and back garden in sufficient pro- 
portion to its size. Possessing also a strong old 
mulberry tree, a tall white-heart cherry tree, a 
black Kentish one, and an almost unbroken 
hedge, all round, of alternate gooseberry and 
currant bush; decked, in due season (for the 
ground was wholly beneficent), with magical 
splendor of abundant fruit: fresh green, soft 
amber, and rough-bristled crimson bending the 
spinous branches; clustered pearl and pendent 

Xiii 



tishy joyftilly discoverable under the large leaves 
that looked like vine. 

The differences of primal importance which I 
observed between the nature of this garden, and 
that of Eden, as I had imagined it, were, that, 
in this one, all the fruit was forbidden; and there 
were no companionable beasts: in other respects 
the little domain answered every purpose of 
Paradise to me; and the climate, in that cycle of 
our years, allowed me to pass most of my life in 
it. My mother never gave me more to learn than 
she knew I could easily get learnt, if I set myself 
honestly to work, by twelve o'clock. She never 
allowed anything to disturb me when my task 
was set; if it was not said rightly by twelve 
o'clock, I was kept in till I knew it, and in general, 
even when Latin Grammar came to supplement 
the Psalms, I was my own master for at least an 
hour before dinner at half-past one, and for the 
rest of the afternoon. My mother, herself finding 
her chief personal pleasure in her flowers, was 
often planting or pruning beside me — at least if 
I chose to stay beside her. I never thought of 
doing anything behind her back which I would 
not have done before her face; and her presence 
was therefore no restraint to me; but, also, no 
particular pleasure; for, from having always been 
left so much alone, I had generally my own little 
affairs to see after; and on the whole, by the time 
I was seven years old was already getting too 
independent mentally, even of my father and 
mother; and having nobody else to be dependent 
upon, began to lead a very small, perky, con- 
tented, conceited, Cock-Robinson-Crusoe sort of 

xiv 



life, in the central point which it appeared to me 
(as it must naturally appear to geometrical ani- 
mals) that I occupied in the universe. 

This was partly the fault of my father*s modesty; 
and partly of his pride. He had so much more 
confidence in my mother's judgment as to such 
matters than in his own, that he never ventured 
even to help, much less to cross her, in the conduct 
of my education. 

I never had heard my father's or mother's voice 
once raised in any question with each other; nor 
seen an angry or even slightly hurt or offended 
glance in the eyes of either. I had never heard 
a servant scolded, nor even suddenly, passion- 
ately, or in any severe manner, blamed. I had 
never seen a moment's trouble or disorder in any 
household matter; nor anything whatever either 
done in a hurry, or undone in due time* 

Next to this quite priceless gift of Peace, I had 
received the perfect understanding of the natures 
of Obedience and Faith. I obeyed word, or lifted 
finger, of father or mother, simply as a ship her 
helm; not only without idea of resistance, but 
receiving the direction as a part of my own life 
and force, a helpful law, as necessary to me in 
every moral action as the law of gravity in leaping. 
And my practice in Faith was soon complete: 
nothing was ever promised me that was not given; 
nothing ever threatened me that was not inflicted, 
and nothing ever told me that was not true. 

Peace, obedience, faith; these three for chief 
good; next to these, the habit of fixed attention 
with both eyes and mind — on which I will not 
further enlarge at this moment, this being the 

XV 



main practical faculty of my life, causing Mazzini 
to say of me, in conversation authentically re- 
ported, a year or two before his death, that I had 
**the most analytic mind in Europe." An 
opinion in which, so far as I am acquainted with 
Europe, I am myself entirely disposed to concur* 

Lastly, an extreme perfection in palate and all 
other bodily senses, given by the utter prohibition 
of cake, wine, comfits, or, except in carefullest 
restriction, fruit; and by fine preparation of what 
food was given me. Such I esteem the main 
blessings of my childhood; — next, let me count 
the equally dominant calamities. 

First, that I had nothing to love. 

My parents were — in a sort — visible powers of 
nature to me, no more loved than the sun and the 
moon: only I should have been annoyed and 
puzzled if either of them had gone out; (how 
much, now, when both are darkened!) — still less 
did I love God; not that I had any quarrel with 
Him, or fear of Him; but simply found what 
people told me was His service, disagreeable; 
and what people told me was His book, not enter- 
taining. I had no companions to quarrel with, 
neither; nobody to assist, and nobody to thank. 
Not a servant was ever allowed to do anything 
for me, but what it was their duty to do. The 
evil consequence of all this was not, however, 
what might perhaps have been expected, that I 
grew up selfish or unaffectionate; but that, when 
affection did come, it came with violence utterly 
rampant and unmanageable, at least by me, who 
never before had anything to manage. 

For (second of chief calamities) I had nothing to 

xvi 



cndtire. Danger or pain of any kind I knew not: 
my strength was never exercised, my patience 
never tried, and my courage never fortified* Not 
that I was ever afraid of anything, — either ghosts, 
thunder, or beasts; and one of the nearest ap- 
proaches to insubordination which I was ever 
tempted into as a child, was in passionate effort 
to get leave to play with the lion's cubs in Womb- 
weirs menagerie. 

Thirdly. I was taught no precision nor eti- 
quette of manners; it was enough if, in the little 
society we saw, I remained unobtrusive, and re- 
plied to a question without shyness. 

Lastly, and chief of evils. My judgment of 
right and wrong, and powers of independent 
action,* were left entirely undeveloped; because 
the bridle and blinkers were never taken off me. 
Children should have their times of being off 
duty, like soldiers; and when once the obedience, 
if required, is certain, the little creature should be 
very early put for periods of practice in complete 
command of itself; set on the barebacked horse 
of its own will, and left to break it by its own 
strength. The ceaseless authority exercised over 
my youth left me, when cast out at last into the 
world, unable for some time to do more than drift 
with its elements. 

My present verdict, therefore, on the general 
tenor of my education at that time, must be, that 
it was at once too formal and too luxurious; 
leaving my character, at the most important 
moment for its construction, cramped indeed, 

* Action, observe, I say here; in thought I was too 
independent, as said above. 

xvii 



bat not disciplined; and only by protection inno- 
cent, instead of by practice virtuous. My mother 
saw this herself, and btit too clearly, in later years; 
and whenever I did anything wrong, stupid, or 
hard-hearted — (and I have done many things 
that were all three) — always said, **It is because 
you were too much indulged/' 

Among the people whom one must miss out 
of one's life, dead, or worse than dead, by the 
time one is 54, I can only say, for my own part, 
that the one I practically and truly miss most, 
next to father and mother (and putting losses of 
imaginary good out of the question), was a 
** menial/* my father's nurse, and mine. She 
was one of our many — (our many being always 
but few) — and, from her girlhood to her old age, 
the entire ability of her life was given to serving 
us. She had a natural gift and specialty for 
doing disagreeable things; above all, the service of 
a sick-room; so that she was never quite in her 
glory unless some of us were ill. She had also 
some parallel specialty for saying disagreeable 
things; and might be relied upon to give the 
extremely darkest view of any subject, before 
proceeding to ameliorative action upon it. And 
she had a very creditable and republican aversion 
to doing immediately, or in set terms, as she was 
hid; so that when my mother and she got old 
together, and my mother became very imperative 
and particular about having her tea-cup set on one 
side of her little round table, Anne would ob- 
servantly and punctiliously put it always on the 
other; which caused my mother to state to me, 
every morning after breakfast, gravely, that, 

xviii 



if ever a woman in this world was possessed by 
the Devil, Anne was that woman. Bat in spite 
of these momentary and petulant aspirations to 
liberality and independence of character, poor 
Anne remained verily servile in so«I all her days; 
and was altogether occupied from the age of 
J 5 to 72, in doing other people's wills instead of 
her own, and seeking other people's good instead 
of her own: nor did I ever hear on any occasion 
of her doing harm to a human being, except by 
saving two hundred and some odd pounds for her 
relations; in consequence of which some of them, 
after her funeral, did not speak to the rest for 
several months. 

I had Walter Scott's novels and the Iliad (Pope's 
translation), for my only reading, when I was a 
child, on week-days: on Sundays their effect 
was tempered by ** Robinson Qusoe '* and the ** Pil- 
grim's Progress " ; my mother having it deeply in 
her heart to make an evangelical clergyman of 
me. Fortunately, I had an aunt more evan- 
gelical than my mother; and my aunt gave me 
cold mutton for Sunday's dinner, which — as I 
much preferred it hot — greatly diminished the 
influence of the *^ Pilgrim's Progress," and the end 
of the matter was, that I got all the noble im- 
aginative teaching of Defoe and Bunyan, and 
yet — am not an evangelical clergyman. 

I had, however, still better teaching than theirs, 
and that compulsorily, and every day of the week. 
(Have patience with me in this egotism: it is 
necessary for many reasons that you should know 
what influences have brought me into the temper 
in which I write to you.) 

xix 



Walter Scott and Pope's Homer were reading of 
my own election, b«t my mother forced me, by 
steady daily toil, to learn long chapters of the 
Bible by heart; as well as to read it every syllable 
through, alotfd, hard names and all, from Genesis 
to the Apocalypse, about once a year; and to that 
discipline — patient, accurate, and resolute — I owe, 
not only a knowledge of the book, which I find 
occasionally serviceable, but much of my general 
power of taking pains, and the best part of my 
taste in literature. From Walter Scott's novels 
I might easily, as I grew older, have fallen to other 
people's novels; and Pope might, perhaps, have 
led me to take Johnson's English, or Gibbon's, 
as types of language; but, once knowing the 32d 
of Deuteronomy, the n9th Psahn, the J 5th of 
1st Corinthians, the Sermon on the Mount, and 
most of the Apocalypse, every syllable by heart, 
and having always a way of thinking with my- 
self what words meant, it was not possible for 
me, even in the foolishest times of youth, to write 
entirely superficial or formal English, and the 
affectation of trying to write like Hooker and 
George Herbert was the most innocent I could have 
fallen into* From my own masters, then, Scott 
and Homer, I learned the Toryism which my 
best after-thought has only served to confirm. 

We scarcely ever, in our study of education, 
ask this most essential of all questions about a 
man, What patience had his mother or sister with 
him? 

It is only by deliberate effort that I recall the 
long morning hours of toil, as regular as sunrise — 
toil on both sides equal — by which, year after 



year, my mother forced me to leam all the Scotch 
paraphrases by heart, and ever so many chapters 
of the Bible besides (the eighth of ist Kings 
being one, — try it, good reader, in a leisure hour!) 
allowing not so much as a syllable to be missed 
or misplaced; while every sentence was required 
to be said over and over again till she was satis- 
fied with the accent of it, I recollect a struggle 
between us of about three weeks, concerning the 
accent of the ^*oV* in the lines 

'* Shall any following spring revive 
The ashes of the urn?** 

I insisting, partly in childish obstinacy, and 
partly in true instinct for rhythm (being wholly 
careless on the subject both of urns and their 
contents), on reciting it, **The ashes of the urn/*^ 
It was not, I say, till after three weeks* labor,, 
that my mother got the accent laid upon the ashes, 
to her mind. But had it taken three years, she 
would have done it, having once undertaken to 
do it. And, assuredly, had she not done it, I 
had been simply an avaricious picture collector^ 
or perhaps even a more avaricious money col- 
lector, to this day; and had she done it wrongly,, 
no after study would ever have enabled me to 
read so much as a single line of verse. 

I feel how much I owe to my mother for having 
so exercised me in the Scriptures as to make me 
grasp them in what my correspondent would call 
their ** concrete whole;** and above all, taught 
me to reverence them, as transcending all thought, 
and ordaining all conduct. 



This she effected, not by her own sayings or 
personal authority; but simply by compelling 
me to read the book thoroughly, for myself. As 
soon as I was able to read with fluency, she began 
a course of Bible work with me, which never 
ceased till I went to Oxford. She read alternately 
verses with me, watching, at first, every intonation 
of my voice, and correcting the false ones, till 
she made me understand the verse, if within my 
reach, rightly, and energetically. It might be 
beyond me altogether; tJmt she did not care about; 
but she made sure that as soon as I got hold of it 
all, I should get hold of it by the right end. 

In this way she began with the first verse of 
Genesis, and went straight through to the last 
-verse of the Apocalypse, hard names, numbers, 
Levitical law, and all; and began again at Genesis 
^he next day; if a name was hard, the better the 
exercise in pronunciation, — if a chapter was tire- 
some, the better lesson in patience, — if loathsome, 
the better lesson in faith that there was some use 
in its being so outspoken. 

It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible 
which my mother thus taught me, that which 
cost me most to learn, and which was, to my 
child's mind, chiefly repulsive — the n9th Psalm — 
has now become of all the most precious to me, 
in its overflowing and glorious passion of love 
for the Law of God: **0h, how love I Thy law! 
it is my meditation all the day.'' 

And at my present age of fifty-five, in spite of 
some enlarged observations of what modern 
philosophers call the Reign of Law, I perceive 
more distinctly than ever the Reign of a Spirit 



of Mercy and Trtrth, — infinite in pardon and 
purification for its wandering and faultftil chil- 
dren, who have yet Love in their hearts; and 
altogether adverse and implacable to its perverse 
and lying enemies, who have resolute hatred in 
their hearts, and resolute falsehood on their lips. 

Village of Simplon, 2d September, J 876. 

I am writing in the little one-windowed room 
opening from the salle-a-manger of the Hotel 
de la Poste; bat under some little disadvantage, 
being disturbed partly by the invocation, as it 
might be fancied, of calamity on the heads of 
nations, by the howling of a frantic wind from 
the Col; and partly by the merry clattering of 
the knives and forks of a hungry party in the 
salon doing their best to breakfast adequately, 
while the diligence changes horses. 

In that same room — a little earlier in the year — 
two-and-thirty years ago, my father and mother 
and I were sitting at one end of the long tabic 
in the evening: and at the other end of it, a quiet, 
somewhat severe-looking, and pale, English (as 
we suppose) traveler, with his wife; she, and my 
mother, working; her husband carefully com- 
pleting some mountain outlines in his sketch- 
book. 

Those days are become very dim to me; and I 
forget which of the groups spoke first. My father 
and mother were always as shy as children; and 
our busy fellow-traveler seemed to us taciturn, 
slightly inaccessible, and even Alpestre, and, as it 
were, hewn out of mountain flint, in his serene 
labor. 

xxiii 



"Whether some harmony of Scottish accent 
struck my father's ear, or the pride he took in his 
son's accomplishments prevailed over his own 
shyness, I think we first ventured word across 
the table, with view of informing the grave 
draughtsman that we also could draw* Where- 
upon my own sketch-book was brought out, the 
pale traveler politely permissive* My good father 
and mother had stopped at the Simplon for me 
(and now, feeling miserable myself in the thin 
air, I know what it cost them), because I wanted 
to climb the high point immediately west of the 
Col, thinking thence to get a perspective of the 
chain joining the Fletschhorn to the Monte Rosa* 
I had been drawing there the best part of the 
afternoon, and had brought down with me careful 
studies of the Fletschhorn itself, and of a great 
pyramid far eastward, whose name I did not know, 
but, from its bearing, supposed it must be the 
Matterhorn, which I had then never seen. 

I have since lost both these drawings; and if 
they were given away, in the old times, when I 
despised the best I did, because it was not like 
Turner, and any friend has preserved them, I wish 
they might be returned to me; for they would 
be of value in Deucalion, and of greater value 
to myself; as having won for me, that evening, 
the sympathy and help of James Forbes. For 
his eye grew keen, and his face attentive, as he 
examined the drawings; and he turned instantly 
to me as to a recognized fellow-workman, — though 
yet young, no less faithful than himself. 

He heard kindly what I had to ask about the 
chain I had been drawing; only saying, with a 

xxiv 



slightly proud smile, of my peak supposed to be 
the Matterhorn, **No, — and when once you have 
seen the Matterhorn, you will never take anything 
else for it I*' 

I repeat it again and yet again, — that I may 
for once, if possible, make this thing assuredly 
clear: — the inherited art-gift must be there, as 
well as the life in some poor measure, or rescued 
fragment, right. This art-gift of mine could not 
have been won by any work, or by any conduct: 
it belongs to me by birtfiright, and came from 
the air of English country villages, and Scottish 
hills. I will risk whatever charge of folly may 
come on me, for printing one of my many childish 
rhymes, written on a frosty day in Glen Farg, 
just north of Loch Leven. It bears date Jst 
January, J 828. I was born on the 8th of Feb- 
ruary, 1 819; and all that I ever could be, and 
aU that I cannot be, the weak little rhyme already 
shows* 

^^Papa, how pretty those icicles are. 
That are seen so near, — that are seen so far; 
— Those dropping waters that come from the rocks 
And many a hole, like the haunt of a fox. 
That silvery stream that runs babbling along. 
Making a murmuring, dancing song. 
Those trees that stand waving upon the rock's 

side. 
And men, that, like spectres, among them glide. 
And waterfalls that are heard from far. 
And come in sight when very near. 
And the water-whecl that turns slowly round. 
Grinding the corn that — requires to be ground,— 

XXV 



(Political Economy of the fature !) 

^And mountains at a distance seen. 

And rivers winding through the plain; 
And quarries with their craggy stones, 
And the wind among them moans/' 

So foretelling Stones of Venice. 

In rough approximation of date nearest to the 
completion of the several pieces of my past work, 
as they are built one on the other^ — at twenty, 
I wrote ** Modem Painters?'' at thirty, **The 
Stones of Venice;'' at forty, '*Unto this Last;" 
at fifty, the Inaugural Oxford lectures; and — if 
**Fors Clavigera" is ever finished as I mean — it 
will mark the mind I had at sixty; and leave 
me in my seventh day of life, perhaps — ^to rest* 
For the code of all I had to teach will then be, 
in form, as it is at this hour, in substance, com- 
pleted* "Modern Painters" taught the claim of 
all lower nature on the hearts of men; of the rock, 
and wave, and herb, as a part of their necessary 
spirit life; in all that I now bid you to do, to dress 
the earth and keep it, I am fulfilling what I then 
began* 

The "Stones of Venice" taught the laws of 
constructive Art, and the dependence of all 
human work or edifice, for its beauty, on the happy 
life of the workman* "Unto this Last" taught 
the laws of that life itself, and its dependence on 
the Sun of Justice; the Inaugural Oxford lectures, 
the necessity that it should be led, and the gracious 
laws of beauty and labor recognized, by the upper, 

xxvl 



no less than the lower classes of England; and 
lastly **Fors Clavigera'' has declared the relation 
of these to each other, and the only possible con- 
ditions of peace and honor, for low and high, rich 
and poor, together, in the holding of that first 
Estate, under the only Despot, God, from which 
whoso falls, angel or man, is kept, not mythically 
nor disputably, but here in visible horror of 
chains under darkness to the judgment of the 
great day; and in keeping which service is perfect 
freedom, and inheritance of all that a loving 
Creator can give to His creatures, and an im- 
mortal Father to His children. 

This, then, is the message, which, knowing no 
more as I unfold the scroll of it, what next would 
be written there, than a blade of grass knows 
what the form of its fruit shall be, I have been led 
on year by year to speak even to this its end. 

What I am, since I take on me the function of a 
teacher, it is well that the reader should know, 
as far as I can tell him. 

Not an unjust person; not an unkind one; not 
a false one; a lover of order, labor, and peace. 
That, it seems to me, is enough to give me right 
to say all I care to say on ethical subjects; more, 
I could only tell definitely through details of 
autobiography such as none but prosperous and 
(in the simple sense of the word) faultless, lives 
could justify — and mine has been neither. 

Having said so much, I am content to leave 
both life and work to be remembered or forgotten, 
as their uses may deserve. 

In many things I am the reverse of Conservative; 
nay, there are some long-established things which 

XKyii 



I hope to see changed before I die; btit I want 
still to keep the fields of England green, and her 
cheeks red; and that girls shotild be taught to 
c«rtsey, and boys to take their hats off, when 
a professor or otherwise digniiied person passes 
by; and that kings should keep their crowns on 
their heads, and bishops their crosiers in their 
hands; and should duly recognize the significance 
of the crown, and the use of the crook. 

I find some of my friends greatly agitated in 
mind about Responsibility, Free-will, and the like. 
I settled all those matters for myself, before I was 
ten years old, by jumping up and down an awk- 
ward turn of four steps in my nursery stairs, and 
considering whether it was likely that God knew 
whether I should jump only three, or the whole 
four at a time* Having settled it in my mind that 
He knew quite well, though I didn't, which I 
should do; and also whether I should fall or not 
in the course of the performance, — though I was 
altogether responsible for taking care not to, — 
I never troubled my head more on the matter, 
from that day to this. But my friends keep 
hiizzitig and puzzling about it, as if they had to 
order the course of the world themselves; and 
won't attend to me for an instant, if I ask why 
little girls have large shoes. 

I don't suppose any man, with a tongue in his 
head, and zeal to use it, was ever left so entirely 
unattended to, as he grew old, by his early friends; 
and it is doubly and trebly strange to me, because 
I have lost none of my power of sympathy with 
them* Some are chemists; and I am always 
glad to hear of the last new thing in elements; 



some are palasontoIogistSf and I am no less happy 
to know of any lately unbtiried beast peculiar in his 
bonesj the lawyers and clergymen can always 
interest me with any story out of their courts 
or parishes; — but not one of them ever asks what 
I am about myself. If they chance to meet me 
in the streets of Oxford, they ask whether I am 
staying there. "When I say, yes, they ask how 
I like it; and when I tell them I don't like it all, 
and don't think little girls should have large shoes, 
they tell me I ought to read the **Cours de Phi- 
losophie Positive/' As if a man who had lived 
to be fifty-four, content with what philosophy 
was needful to assure him that salt was savory, 
and pepper hot, could ever be made positive in 
his old age, in the impertinent manner of these 
youngsters. But positive in a pertinent and 
practical manner, I have been, and shall be ; with 
such stern and steady wedge of fact and act as time 
may let me drive into the gnarled blockheadism 
of the British mob. 

You know there is a tendency in the minds of 
many men, when they are heavily disappointed 
in the main purposes of their life, to feel, and 
perhaps in warning, perhaps in mockery, to 
declare that life itself is a vanity. Because it 
has disappointed them, they think its nature is 
of disappointment always, or at best, of pleasure 
that can be grasped by imagination only; that 
the cloud of it has no strength nor fire within; 
but is a painted cloud only, to be delighted in, 
yet despised. But the effect of failure upon my 
own mind has been just the reverse of this. The 
more that my life disappointed me, the more 

xxix 



solemn and wonderful it became to me. It be- 
came to me not a painted cloud, but a terrible 
and impenetrable one: not a mirage, which van- 
ished as I drew near, b«t a pillar of darkness, 
to which I was forbidden to draw near* For I 
saw that both my own failure, and such success 
in petty things as in its poor triumph seemed to 
me worse than failure, came from the want of 
sufficiently earnest effort to understand the whole 
law and meaning of existence, and to bring it to 
noble and due end; as, on the other hand, I saw 
more and more clearly that all enduring success 
in the arts, or in any other occupation, had come 
from the ruling of lower purposes, not by a con- 
viction of their nothingness, but by a solemn 
faith in the advancing power of human nature, 
or in the promise, however dimly apprehended, 
that the mortal part of it would one day be swal- 
lowed up in immortality; and that, indeed, the 
arts themselves never had reached any vital 
strength or honor but in the effort to proclaim 
this immortality, and in the service either of 
great and just religion, or of some unselfish patriot- 
ism, and law of such national life as must be the 
foundation of religion* 



XXX 



NOBLE THOUGHTS OF RUSKIN 
BEAUTY 




^NY material object which can 
give tis pleasure in the simple 
contemplation of its otitward 
^ qttalities, withotrt any direct 
M and definite exertion of the 
intellect, I call in some way, or 
in some degree, beautifwL 

« # 4 

C[The sensation of Beatrty is not sensual 
on the one hand, nor is it intellectual on the 
other, but is dependent on a pure, right, and 
open state of the heart, both for its truth and its 
intensity, insomuch that even the right after- 
action of the intellect upon facts of beauty so 
apprehended, is dependent on the acuteness 
of the heart-feeling about them* 

4 m 4 

([We must be modest and cautious in the 
pronouncing of positive opinions on the sub- 

t 



ject of beatrty; for every one of as has peculiar 
sources of enjoyment necessarily opened to him 
in certain scenes and things^ sources which are 
sealed to others; and we must be wary, on the 
one hand, of confounding these in ourselves 
with ultimate conclusions of taste, and so forcing 
them upon all as authoritative; and on the 
other, of supposing that the enjoyments, which 
we cannot share, are shallow or unwarrantable, 
because incommunicable. 

«l 4 «l 

fl There is not any matter, nor any spirit, nor 
any creature, but it is capable of a unity of 
some kind with other creatures, and in that 
unity is its perfection and theirs, and a pleasure 
also for the beholding of all other creatures that 
can behold. So the unity of spirits is partly 
in their sympathy, and partly in their giving 
and taking, and always in their love; and these 
are their delight and their strength, for their 
strength is in their co-working and army fellow- 
ship, and their delight is in the givrng and re- 
ceiving of alternate and perpetual currents of 
good, their inseparable dependency on each 
other's being. 

m 4 4 

C^Its first perfection, therefore, relating to 
vital beauty, is the kindness and unselfish ful- 
ness of heart, which receives the utmost amount 
of pleasure from the happiness of all things. 

2 



C^ There is not any virttie the exercise of 
which, even momentarily, will not impress a new 
fairness upon the features; neither on them 
only, btft on the whole body both the intelli- 
gence and the moral faculties have operation, 
for even all the movements and gestures, how- 
ever slight, are different in their modes accord- 
ing to the mind that governs them, and on the 
gentleness and decision of just feeling there 
follows a grace of action, and through continu- 
ance of this a grace of form, which by no disci- 
pline may be taught or attained. 

4 tt # 

fl Our purity of taste is best tested by its 
universality. If we can only admire this thing 
or that, we may be sure that our cause for 
liking is of a finite and false nature. But if we 
can perceive beauty in everything of God's 
doing, we may argue that we have reached the 
true perception of its universal laws. 

« ti 4 

C^ True taste is forever growing, learning, 
reading, worshipping, laying its hand upon its 
mouth because it is astonished, casting its shoes 
from off its feet because it finds all ground holy, 
lamenting over itself, and testing itself by the 
way that it fits things. And it finds whereof to 
feed, and whereby to grow, in all things, and 
therefore the complaint so often made by young 

3 



artists that they have not within their reach 
materials, or subjects enough for their fancy, is 
tftterly groundless, and the sign only of their 
own blindness and inefficiency; for there is 
that to be seen in every street and lane of every 
city — that to be felt and found in every human 
heart and countenance, that to be loved in 
every road-side weed and moss-grown wall, 
which, in the hands of faithful men, may convey 
emotions of glory and sublimity, continual and 
exalted* 

ik ^ ^ 

fl So natural is it to the human heart to 
fix itself in hope rather than in present posses- 
sion, and so subtle is the charm which the imag- 
ination casts over what is distant or denied, 
that there is often a more touching power in 
the scenes which contain far-away promise of 
something greater than themselves, than in those 
which exhaust the treasures and powers of 
Nature in an unconquerable and excellent glory, 
leaving nothing more to be by the fancy pictured 
or pursued* 

4 4 # 

fl The greatest glory of a building is not in 
its stones, or in its gold. Its glory is in its age, 
and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stem 
watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even 
of approval or condemnation, which we feel in 

4 



walls that have long been washed by the passing 
waves of htjmanity* 

4 4 «l 

f[ Of all God's gifts to the sight of man, color 
is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn. 
We speak rashly of gay color and sad color, 
for color cannot at once be good and gay. All 
good color is in some degree pensive, the loveli- 
est is melancholy, and the purest and most 
thoughtftfl minds are those which love color 
the most. 

4 4 4 

fl The imagination is never governed; it 
is always the ruling and Divine power: and the 
rest of the man is to it only as an instrument 
which it sounds, or a tablet on which it writes; 
clearly and sublimely if the wax be smooth and 
the strings true, grotesquely and wildly if they 
are stained and broken. 

4 4 4 

(I All noble ornament is the expression of 
man's delight in God's work. 

4 4 4 

fl The function of ornament is to make you 
happy. Now, in what are you rightly happy? 
Not in thinking what you have done yourself; 
not in your own pride; not in your own birth; 
not in your own being, or your own will, but in 

5 



looking at God; watching what He does, what 
He is; and obeying His law, and yielding yotir- 
self to His wilL 

4 4 4 

f[ Yoii are to be made happy by ornaments; 
therefore they must be the expression of all this. 




PAINTING 

OF '^GREATNESS OF STYLE** IN PAINTING 

|HOICE of Noble Stibject.— 
Greatness of style consists then: 
firsts in the habitual choice of 
subjects of thought which in- 
volve wide interests and pro- 
found passions, as opposed to 
those which involve narrow in- 
terests and slight passions* The style is greater 
or less in proportion to the nobleness of the in- 
terests and passions involved in the subject* 

«l 4 it 

tl Love of Beauty. — The second character- 
istic of the great school of art is, that it intro- 
duces in the conception of its subject as much 
beauty as is possible, consistently with truth. 

4 ii td 

C^ Great art dwells on all that is beautiful; 
but false art omits or changes all that is ugly* 
Great art accepts Nature as she is, but directs 

7 



the eyes and thottghts to what is most perfect 
in her; false art saves itself the trouble of direc- 
tion by removing or altering whatever it thinks 
objectionable. 

4 ii m 

tl Nature has for the most part mingled 
her inferior and nobler elements as she mingles 
sunshine with shade, giving due use and influ- 
ence to both, and the painter who chooses to 
remove the shadow, perishes in the burning 
desert he has created. 

4 m 4 

C^ It is only by the habit of representing 
faithfully all things, that we can truly learn 
what is beautiful and what is not. The ugliest 
objects contain some element of beauty; and 
in all, it is an element peculiar to themselves, 
which cannot be separated from their ugliness, 
but must either be enjoyed together with it, 
or not at alL The more a painter accepts nature 
as he finds it, the more unexpected beauty he 
discovers in what he at first despised. 

^ ^ ^ 

C Sincerity. — The next characteristic of 
great art is that it includes the largest possible 
quantity of Truth in the most perfect possible 
harmony. If it were possible for art to give all 
the truths of nature, it ought to do it. But 
this is not possible. Choice must always be 

8 



made of some facts which can be represented, 
from among others which mast be passed by in 
silence, or even, in some respects, misrepre- 
sented. 

^ ^ ^ 

fl The pttrsuit, by the imagination, of beatiti- 
ftil and strange thoughts or subjects, to the 
exclusion of painful or common ones, is called 
among us, in these modem days, the pursuit of 
** the ideal; ** nor does any subject deserve more 
attentive examination than the manner in which 
this pursuit is entered upon by the modem 
mind. 

4 td 4 

C[ Men's proper business in this world falls 
mainly into three divisions: 

4 1% 4 

<[ First, to know themselves, and the existing 
state of the things they have to do with. 

1% td 4 

fl Secondly, to be happy in themselves, 
and in the existing state of things. 

id 4 ^ 

fl Thirdly, to mend themselves, and the 
existing state of things, as far as either are 
marred or mendable. 

9 



fl Sublimity is not a specific term, — not a 
term descriptive of the effect of a particular 
class of ideas. Anything which elevates the 
mind is sublime, and the elevation -of mind is 
produced by the contemplation of greatness of 
any kind; but chiefly, of course, by the greatness 
of the noblest things. Sublimity is, therefore, 
only another word for the effect of greatness 
upon the feelings. Greatness of matter, space, 
power, virtue, or beauty, are thus all sublime; 
and there is perhaps no desirable quality of a 
work of art, which in its perfection is not, in 
some way or degree, sublime. 

t<l 4 4 

C Every herb and flower of the field has its 
specific, distinct, and perfect beauty; it has its 
peculiar habitation, expression, and function. 
The highest art is that which seizes this specific 
character, which developes and illustrates it, 
which assigns to it its proper position in the 
landscape, and which, by means of it, enhances 
and enforces the great impression which the 
picture is intended to convey. 

tl Every kind of knowledge may be sought 
from ignoble motives, and for ignoble ends; 
and in those who so possess it, it is ignoble 
knowledge; while the very same knowledge 
is in another mind an attainment of the highest 

10 



dignity, and conveying the greatest blessing. 
This is the difference between the mere botanist's 
knowledge of plants, and the great poet's or 
painter's knowledge of them. The one notes 
their distinctions for the sake of swelling his 
herbarium; the other, that he may render 
them vehicles of expression and emotion. 

^ m td 

tl There is sublimity and power in every 
field of nature from the pole to the line; and 
though the painters of one country are often 
better and greater, universally, than those of an- 
other, this is less because the subjects of art 
are wanting anywhere, than because one country 
or one age breeds mighty and thinking men, and 
another none. 

# it ti 

fl Happily for mankind, beauty and ugliness 
are as positive in their nature as physical pain 
and pleasure, as light and darkness, or as life 
and death; and, though they may be denied 
or misunderstood in many fantastic ways, the 
most subtle reasoner will at least find that 
color and sweetness are still attractive to him, 
and that no logic will enable him to think the 
rainbow sombre, or the violet scentless. 

4 4 4 

fl The great men never know how or why 
they do things. They have no rules, cannot 

n 



comprehend the nattire of rules; — do not, 
usisallYf even know, in what they do, what is 
best or what is worst: to them it is all the same; 
something they cannot help saying or doing* 

4 it ii 

C[ Admiration excited by the budding of a 
flower is a poetical feeling, because it is im- 
possible that this manifestation of spiritual 
power and vital beauty can ever be enough 
admired. 

tn «i «i 

<[ It is necessary to the existence of poetry 
that the grounds of these feelings should be 
furnished by the imagination. Poetical feeling, 
that is to say, mere noble emotion, is not poetry. 
It is happily inherent in all human nature 
deserving the name, and is found often to be 
purest in the least sophisticated. But the 
power of assembling, by the help of the imagina- 
tion, such images as will excite these feelings, 
is the power of the poet or literally of the 
'' Maker.'' 

tH «l K| 

fl Painting is properly to be opposed to 
speaking or writing, but not to poetry. Both 
painting and speaking are methods of expres- 
sion. Poetry is the employment of either for 
the noblest purposes. 

12 



fl A powerfully imaginative mind seizes and 
combines at the same instant, not only two, 
bat all the important ideas of its poem or picture, 
and while it works with any one of them, it is 
at the same instant working with and modifying 
all in their relations to it, never losing sight of 
their bearings on each other; as the motion 
of a snake's body goes through all parts at once, 
and its volition acts at the same instant in coils 
that go contrary ways* 

«^ td m 

€1 This faculty is indeed something that looks 
as if man were made after the image of God* 
It is inconceivable, admirable, altogether divine. 

td 4 t« 

41 Every great conception of poet and painter 
is held and treated by imagination. Every 
character that is so much as touched by men 
like -^schylus, Homer, Dante, or Shakespeare, 
is by them held by the heart; and every cir- 
cumstance or sentence of their being, speaking, 
or seeming, is seized by process from within, 
and is referred to that inner secret spring of 
which the hold is never lost for an instant; 
so that every sentence, as it has been thought 
out from the heart, opens for us a way down to 
the heart, leads us to the centre, and then leaves 
us to gather what more we may; it is the open 
sesame of a huge, obscure, endless cave, with 

13 



inexhatistibic treasure of pure gold scattered 
in it; the wandering abotrt and gathering the 
pieces may be left to any of us, all can accom- 
plish that; but the first opening of that invisible 
door in the rock is of the imagination only* 

1% 4 td 

C^ The fancy sees the otttside, and is able 
to give a portrait of the otitside, clear, brilliant, 
and fttll of detaih 

4 4 4 

tl The imagination sees the heart and inner 
nattire, and makes them felt, btit is often 
obsctire, mysterious, and interrupted, in its 
giving of outer detail* 

4 4 4 

41 If the imagination is to be called to take 
delight in any object, it will not be always well, 
if we can help it, to put the real object there, 
before it* The imagination would on the whole 
rather have it not there; — the reality and 
substance are rather in the imagination's way; 
it would think a good deal more of the thing 
if it could not see it* Hence, that strange and 
sometimes fatal charm, which there is in all 
things as long as we wait for them, and the 
moment we have lost them; but which fades 
while we possess them; — that sweet bloom of 
all that is far away, which perishes under our 



toach. Yet the feeling of this is not a weakness; 
it is one of the most glorious gifts of the human 
mindt making the whole infinite future, and 
imperishable past, a richer inheritance, if faith- 
fully inherited, than the changeful, frail, fleeting 
present; it is also one of the many witnesses 
in us to the truth that these present and tangible 
things are not meant to satisfy us. 

^ ^ ^ 

C^ Greatness in art is not a teachable nor 
gainable thing, but the expression of the mind 
of a God-made great man; that teach, or 
preach, or labor as you will, everlasting differ- 
ence is set between one man's capacity and an- 
other's; and that this God-given supremacy 
is the priceless thing, always just as rare in the 
world at one time as another. What you can 
manufacture, or communicate, you can lower 
the price of, but this mental supremacy is in- 
communicable; you will never multiply its 
quantity, nor lower its price; and nearly the 
best thing that men can generally do is to set 
themselves, not to the attainment, but the 
discovery of this; learning to know gold, when 
we see it, from iron-glance, and diamonds from 
flint-sand, being for most of us a more profitable 
employment than trying to make diamonds 
out of our own charcoal. And for this God- 
made supremacy, I generally have used, and 
shall continue to use, the word Inspiration, not 

15 



carelessly nor lightly, but in all logical calmness 
and perfect reverence* 

^ ^ ^ 

<^AII egotism, and selfish care, or regard, 
are in proportion to their constancy, destructive 
of imagination; whose play and power depend 
altogether on our being able to forget ourselves 
and enter like possessing spirits into the bodies 
of things about us. 

^ 4 m 

€1 The first test of a truly great man is his 
humility. I do not mean, by humility, doubt of 
his own power, or hesitation in speaking of his 
opinions; but a right understanding of the 
relation between what he can do and say, and 
the rest of the world's sayings and doings. All 
great men not only know their business, but 
usually know that they know it; and are not 
only right in their main opinions, but they 
usually know that they are right in them; 
only they do not think much of themselves on 
that account. 

tn m td 

C The greatest thing a human soul ever does 
in this world is to see something, and tell what 
it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can 
talk for one who can think, but thousands can 
think for one who can see. To see clearly, is 
poetry, prophecy, and religion, — all in one. 

i6 



fl In the reading of a great poem, in the 
hearing of a noble oration, it is the stibject of 
the writer and not his skill, — his passion, not 
his power, on which our minds are fixed* We 
see as he sees, hut we see not him. We be- 
come part of him, feel with him, jtfdge, behold 
with him; birt we think of him as little as of 
ourselves. Do we think of ^schyltts while we 
wait on the silence of Cassandra, or of Shake- 
speare, while we listen to the wailing of Lear ? 
Not so. The power of the masters is known 
by their self-annihilation. It is commensurate 
with the degree in which they themselves appear 
not in their work. The harp of the minstrel is 
untruly touched, if his own glory is all that it 
truly records. Every great writer may be at 
once known by his guiding the mind far from 
himself to the beauty which is not of his creation, 
and the knowledge which is past his finding out* 

4 td 4 

C^ The human beauty, which, whether in its 
bodily being or in imagined divinity, had become, 
for the reasons we have seen, the principal ob- 
ject of culture and sympathy to the Greeks, 
was, in its perfection, eminently orderly, sym- 
metrical, and tender. Hence, contemplating 
it constantly in this state, they could not but 
feel a proportionate fear of all that was disor- 
derly, unbalanced, and rugged. Having trained 
their stoutest soldiers into a strength so delicate 

\7 



and lovely, that their white flesh, with their 
blood upon it, should look like ivory stained 
with ptirple; and having always around them, 
in the motion and majesty of this beauty, 
enough for the full employment of their imagi- 
nation, they shrank with dread or hatred from 
all the ruggedness of lower nature, — from the 
wrinkled forest bark, the jagged hill-crest, 
and irregular, inorganic storm of sky; looking 
to these for the most part as adverse powers, 
and taking pleasure only in such portions of the 
lower world as were at once conducive to the 
rest and health of the human frame, and in 
harmony with the laws of its gentler beauty. 

^ ^ ^ 

€[ A common book will often give you much 
amusement, but it is only a noble book which 
will give you dear friends. Remember also that 
it is of less importance to you in your earlier 
years, that the books you read should be clever, 
than that they should be right. I do not mean 
oppressively or repulsively instructive; but that 
the thoughts they express should be just, and 
the feelings they excite generous. It is not nec- 
essary for you to read the wittiest or the most 
suggestive books: it is better, in general, to hear 
what is already known, and maybe simply said. 
Much of the literature of the present day, though 
good to be read by persons of ripe age, has a ten- 
dency to agitate rather than confirm, and leaves 
18 



its readers too frequently in a helpless or hopeless 
indignation, the worst possible state into which 
the mind of yotrth can be thrown. It may, indeed, 
become necessary for yo«, as you advance in 
life, to set yotir hand to things that need to be 
altered in the world, or apply your heart chiefly 
to what must be pitied in it, or condemned; 
btrt, for a young person, the safest temper is 
one of reverence, and the safest place one of 
obscurity. Certainly at present, and perhaps 
through all your life, your teachers are wisest 
when they make you content in quiet virtue, 
and that literature and art are best for you 
which point out, in common life and familiar 
things, the objects for hopeful labor, and for 
humble Jove. 

« # K| 

<[ There is no action so slight, nor so mean, 
but it may be done to a great purpose, and 
ennobled therefor; nor is any purpose so great 
but that slight actions may help it, and may be 
so done as to help it much, most especially 
that chief of all purposes, the pleasing of God. 

4 4 4 

4[ I believe one of the worst symptoms of 
modem society to be, its notion of great inferior- 
ity, and ungentlemanliness, as necessarily be- 
longing to the character of a tradesman. I 
believe tradesmen may be, ought to be — often 

\9 



are, more gentlemen than idle and useless 
people: and I believe that art may do noble 
work by recording in the hall of each trade, the 
services which men belonging to that trade have 
done for their country, both preserving the 
portraits, and recording the important incidents 
in the lives, of those who have made great ad- 
vances in commerce and civilization* 

4 4 1% 

tl To give alms is nothing unless yotj give 
thought also; and therefore it is written, 
not ** blessed is he that feedeth the poor,'' but, 
** blessed is he that considereth the poor/* 
And a little thought and a little kindness are 
often worth more than a great deal of money. 

tH td # 

fl There is assuredly no action of our social 
life, however unimportant, which, by kindly 
thought, may not be made to have a beneficial 
influence upon others; and it is impossible 
to spend the smallest sum of money, for any 
not absolutely necessary purpose, without a 
grave responsibility attaching to the manner 
of spending it^ The object we ourselves covet 
may, indeed, be desirable and harmless, so far 
as we are concerned, but the providing us with 
it may, perhaps, be a very prejudicial occupa- 
tion to some one else. And then it becomes 
instantly a moral question, whether we are to 

20 



indiiige o«rseIves or not* Whatever we wish to 
hiSYf we ought first to consider not only if the 
thing be fit for tis, hut if the manufacture of 
it he a, wholesome and happy one; and if, on 
the whole, the sum we are going to spend will 
do as much good spent in this way as it would if 
spent in any other way* It may be said that 
we have not time to consider all this before we 
make a purchase* But no time could be spent 
in a more important duty; and God never 
imposes a duty without giving the time to do 
it* Let us, however, only acknowledge the 
principle; — once make up your mind to allow 
the consideration of the effect of your purchases 
to regulate the kind of your purchase, and you 
will soon easily find grounds enough to decide 
upon* The plea of ignorance wiU never take 
away our responsibilities. 

it « K| 

C[ The ideal of human life is a union of Spar- 
tan simplicity of manners with Athenian sensi- 
bility and imagination, but in actual results, we 
are continually mistaking ignorance for simplic- 
ity, and sensuality for refinement* 

4 4 4 

d In general, pride is at the bottom of all 
great mistakes* All the other passions do occa- 
sional good, but wherever pride puts in its word, 
everything goes wrong, and what it might be 

21 



desirable to do quietly and innocently, it is 
morally dangerous to do proudly* 

f^ ^ ^ 

il I think that every rightly constituted 
mind ought to rejoice, not so much in knowing 
anything clearly, as in feeling that there is 
infinitely more which it cannot know* None 
but proud or weak men would mourn over this, 
for we may always know more if we choose, by 
working on; but the pleasure is, I think, to 
humble people, in knowing that the journey 
is endless, the treasure inexhaustible, — watch- 
ing the cloud still march before them with its 
summitless pillar, and being sure that, to the 
end of time and to the length of eternity, the 
mysteries of its infinity will still open farther 
and farther, their dimness being the sign and 
necessary adjunct of their inexhaustibleness* 

tH # «l 

tl In order that people may be happy in 
their work, these three things are needed: They 
must be fit for it: They must not do too much 
of it: and they must have a sense of success in it 
— not a doubtful sense, such as needs some 
testimony of other people for its confirmation, 
but a sure sense, or rather knowledge, that so 
much work has been done well, and fruitfully 
done, whatever the world may say or think 
about it. So that in order that a man may be 

22 



happy, it is necessary that he should not only he 
capable of his work, btft a good judge of his 
work, 

1^ 1% td 

C^ No great intellecttial thing was ever done 
by great effort; a great thing can only be done 
by a great man, and he does it without ef f ort, 

4 4 * 

<[ If a great thing can be done at all, it can 
be done easily; when it is needed to be done, 
there is perhaps only one man in the world 
who can do it; but he can do it without any 
trouble — without more trouble, that is, than 
it costs small people to do small things; nay^ 
perhaps, with less, 

tH td ii 

tl A man of genius is always far more ready 
to work than other people, and gets so much 
more good from the work that he does, and is 
often so little conscious of the inherent divinity 
in himself, that he is very apt to ascribe all his 
capacity to his work, 

td K| K| 

<[ It is no man's business whether he has 
genius or not: work he must, whatever he is, 
but quietly and steadily; and the natural and 
unforced results of such work will be always 
the things that God meant him to do, and will 

23 



be his best* No agonies nor heart-rendings will 
enable him to do any better. If he be a great 
man, they will be great things; if a small man, 
small things; but always, if thus peacefully 
done, good and right; always, if restlessly and 
ambitiously done, false, hoUow, and despicable. 
4 4 td 

<[ I do not know anything more ludicrous 
among the self-deceptions of well-meaning people 
than their notion of patriotism, as requiring 
them to limit their efforts to the good of their 
own country; — the notion that charity is a 
geographical virtue, and that what it is holy and 
righteous to do for people on one bank of a river, 
it is quite improper and unnatural to do for 
people on the other. 

4 ii td 

<[ Life being very short, and the quiet hours 
of it few, we ought to waste none of them in 
reading valueless books; and valuable books 
should, in a civilized country, be within the 
reach of every one, printed in excellent form, 
for a just price* 

4 4 # 

€[ I would urge upon every young woman 
to obtain as soon as she can, by the severest 
economy, a restricted, serviceable, and steadily 
— however slowly — increasing, series of books 
for use through life; making her little library, 

24 



of all the iistmiisre in her room, the most studied 
and decorative piece; every volume having its 
assigned place, like a little statue in its niche. 

^ ^ ^ 

€1 No man ever lived a right life who had not 
been chastened by a woman's love, strengthened 
by her courage, and guided by her discretion. 

4 ^ « 

€1 The best women are indeed necessarily 
the most difficult to know; they are recognized 
chiefly in the happiness of their husbands and 
the nobleness of their children; they are only 
to be divined, not discerned, by the stranger; 
and, sometimes, seem ahnost helpless except 
in their homes; yet without the help of one of 
them the day would probably have come before 
now when I should have written and thought 
no more. 

4 K| 4 

<[ All the true literary work before you, for 
life, must begin with obedience to that order, 
** Break up your fallow ground, and sow not 
among thorns.*' Having then faithfully lis- 
tened to the great teachers, that you may enter 
into their Thoughts, you have yet this higher 
advance to make; — you have to enter into 
their Hearts. As you go to them first for clear 
sight, so you must stay with them that you may 

25 



share at last their jtfst and mighty Passion^ 
Passion, or ** sensation/' I am not afraid of 
the word; still less of the things Yoti have 
heard many outcries against sensation, lately; 
but, I can tell yoti, it is not less sensation we 
want, btit more. The ennobling difference 
between one man and another, — between one 
animal and another, — is precisely in this, 
that one feels more than another. If we were 
sponges, perhaps sensation might not be easily 
got for tfs; if we were earth-worms, liable at 
every instant to be cat in two by the spade, 
perhaps too mtich sensation might not be good 
for tts, Btit, being htiman creatures, it is good 
for tis; nay, we are only htiman in so far as we 
are sensitive, and oar honor is precisely in pro- 
portion to oar passion, 

AAA 

C[ We cannot determine what the qaeenly 
power of women should be, antil we are agreed 
what their ordinary power shotild be. We 
cannot consider how education may fit them 
for any widely extending duty, until we are 
agreed what is their true constant duty. And 
there never was a time when wilder words were 
spoken, or more vain imagination permitted, 
respecting this question — quite vital to all 
social happiness. The relations of the womanly 
to the manly nature, their different capacities 

26 



of intellect or of virtue, seem never to have been 
yet measured with entire consent* 

^ ^ ^ 

€[ "We hear of the mission and of the rights 
of Woman, as if these cotjid ever be separate 
from the mission and the rights of Man; — as 
if she and her lord were creatures of independent 
kind and of irreconcilable claim. This, at least, 
is wrong. And not less wrong — perhaps even 
more foolishly wrong (for I will anticipate thus 
far what I hope to prove) — is the idea that 
woman is only the shadow and attendant image 
of her lord, owing him a thoughtless and servile 
obedience, and supported altogether in her 
weakness by the preeminence of his fortitude^ 
td 4 td 

11 This, I say, is the most foolish of all errors 
respecting her who was made to be the helpmate 
of man. As if he could be helped effectively 
by a shadow, or worthily by a slave! 

« # « 

<[ Let us try, then, whether we cannot get at 
some clear and harmonious idea (it must be 
harmonious if it is true) of what womanly mind 
and virtue are in power and office, with respect 
to man's; and how their relations, rightly 
accepted, aid, and increase, the vigor, and honor, 
and authority of both. 

27 



f[ And now I mtfst repeat one thing, namely, 
that the first use of education was to enable us 
to consult with the wisest and the greatest men 
on all points of earnest difficulty* That to use 
books rightly, was to go to them for help: to 
appeal to them, when our own knowledge and 
power of thought failed; to be led by them into 
wider sight, purer conception than our own, and 
receive from them the united sentence of the 
judges and councils of all time, against our soli- 
tary and unstable opinion. 

4 ti 4| 

C^ Let us do this now. Let us see whether the 
greatest, the wisest, the purest-hearted of all 
ages are agreed in any wise on this point; let 
us hear the testimony they have left respecting 
what they held to be the true dignity of woman, 
and her mode of help to man. 

4 m « 

€1 And first let us take Shakespeare. 
m td 4 

€1 Note broadly in the outset, Shakespeare 
has no heroes; — he has only heroines. There 
is hardly a play that has not a perfect woman 
in it, steadfast in grave hope and errorless pur- 
pose; Cordelia, Desdemona, Isabella, Hermione, 
Imogene, Queen Katherine, Perdita, Sylvia, 
Viola, Rosalind, Helena, and last, and perhaps 

28 



loveliest, Virgilia, are all faultless; conceived 
in the highest heroic type of humanity. 

^ 4 td 

fl Then observe, secondly, 
4 «l « 

€1 The catastrophe of every play is caused 
always by the folly or fault of a man; the re- 
demption, if there be any, is by the wisdom and 
virtue of a woman, and, failing that, there is 
none. The catastrophe of King Lear is owing 
to his own want of judgment, his impatient 
vanity, his misunderstanding of his children; 
the virtue of his one true daughter would have 
saved him from all the injuries of the others, 
unless he had cast her away from him; as it is, 
she all but saves him. 

«l 4 4 

€[ Of Othello I need not trace the tale; — 
nor the one weakness of his so mighty love; nor 
the inferiority of his perceptive intellect to that 
even of the second woman character in the play, 
the Emilia who dies in wild testimony against 
his error: — **0h, murderous coxcomb! What 
should such a fool Do with so good a wife ? ** 

4 4 i« 

€1 In Romeo and Juliet, the wise and entirely 
brave stratagem of the wife is brought to ruinous 
issue by the reckless impatience of her husband. 

29 



In Winter's Talc, and in Cymbelinc, the happi- 
ness and existence of two princely households, 
lost through long years, and imperiled to the 
death by the folly and obstinacy of the husbands, 
are redeemed at last by the queenly patience and 
wisdom of the wives. In Measure for Measure, 
the injustice of the judges, and the corrupt 
cowardice of the brother, are opposed to the 
victorious truth and adamantine purity of a 
woman. In Coriolanus, the mother's counsel, 
acted upon in time, would have saved her son 
from all evil; his momentary forgetfulness of it is 
his ruin; her prayer at last granted, saves him 
— not, indeed, from death, but from the curse 
of living as the destroyer of his country* 

m K| td 

tl And what shall I say of Julia, constant 
against the fickleness of a lover who is a mere 
wicked child ? — of Helena, against the petulance 
and insult of a careless youth ? — of the patience 
of Hero, the passion of Beatrice, and the cahnly 
devoted wisdom of the " unlessoned girl,'' who 
appears among the helplessness, the blindness, 
and the vindictive passions of men, as a gentle 
angel, to save merely by her presence, and de-? 
feat the worst intensities of crime by her smile ? 
t« td 4 

<[ Observe, further, among all the principal 
figures in Shakespeare's plays, there is only one 
weak woman — Ophelia; and it is because she 

30 



fails Hamlet at the critical moment, and is not, 
and cannot in her nature be, a gtiide to him 
when he needs her most, that all the bitter 
catastrophe follows. Finally, though there arc 
three wicked women among the principal figures, 
Lady Macbeth, Regan, and Goneril, they are 
felt at once to be frightful exceptions to the 
ordinary laws of life; fatal in their influence 
also in proportion to the power for good which 
they have abandoned. 

i| td tH 

il Such, in broad light, is Shakespeare's 
testimony to the position and character of 
women in human life. He represents them as 
infallibly faithful and wise counsellors — in- 
corruptibly just and pure examples — strong 
always to sanctify, even when they cannot save^ 

4 Ki m 

d Of any disciplined, or consistent character^ 
earnest in a purpose wisely conceived, or dealing 
with forms of hostile evil, definitely challenged, 
and resolutely subdued, there is no trace in 
Scott's conceptions of men. Whereas in his imag- 
inations of women — in the characters of Ellen 
Douglas, of Flora Maclvor, Rose Bradwardine, 
Catherine Seyton, Diana Vernon, Lilias Red- 
gauntlet, Alice Bridgenorth, Alice Lee, and 
Jeanie Deans — with endless varieties of grace, 
tenderness, and intellectual power, we find in all 

31 



a q«itc infallible and inevitable sense of dignity 
and justice; a fearless, instant, and untiring 
self-sacrifice to even tlie appearance of duty, 
much more to its real claims; and, finally, a 
patient wisdom of deeply restrained affection, 
which does infinitely more than protect its 
objects from a momentary error; it gradually 
forms, animates, and exalts the characters of the 
unworthy lovers, until, at the close of the tale, 
we are just able, and no more, to take patience 
in hearing of their unmerited success* 

m 4 4 

fl So that in all cases, with Scott as with 
Shakespeare, it is the woman who watches over, 
teaches, and guides the youth; it is never, by 
any chance, the youth who watches over or 
educates his mistress* 

4 # 4 

(I Next, take, though more briefly, graver 
and deeper testimony — that of the great Ital- 
ians and Greeks. You know well the plan of 
Dante's great poem — that it is a love-poem 
to his dead lady, a song of praise for her watch 
over his soul. Stooping only to pity, never to 
love, she yet saves him from destruction — 
saves him from helL He is going eternally 
astray in despair; she comes down from heaven 
to his help, and throughout the ascents of Para- 
dise is his teacher, interpreting for him the most 

32 



difficult truths, divine and human: and leading 
him, with rebuke upon rebuke, from star to star* 

it m m 

([ You may think, perhaps, a Greek knight 
would have had a lower estimate of women 
than this Christian lover. His own spiritual 
subjection to them was indeed not so absolute; 
but as regards their own personal character, it 
was only because you could not have followed 
me so easily, that I did not take the Greek 
women instead of Shakespeare's; and instance, 
for chief ideal types of human beauty and faith, 
the simple mother's and wife's heart of An- 
dromache; the divine, yet rejected wisdom 
of Cassandra; the playful kindness and simple 
princess-life of happy Nausicaa; the house- 
wifely calm of that of Penelope, with its watch 
upon the sea; the ever patient, fearless, hope- 
lessly devoted piety of the sister and daughter, 
in Antigone; the bowing down of Iphigenia, 
Iamb-like and silent; and, finally, the expecta- 
tion of the resurrection, made clear to the soul 
of the Greeks in the return from her grave of 
that Alcestis, who, to save her husband, had 
passed calmly through the bitterness of death* 

4 4 # 

fl Now I could multiply witness upon witness 
of this kind upon you if I had time* I would 
take Chaucer, and show you why he wrote a 

33 



Legend of Good Women; bat no Legend of 
Good Men* I would take Spenser, and show 
you how all his fairy knights are sometimes 
deceived and sometimes vanquished; but the 
soul of Una is never darkened, and the spear of 
Britomart is never broken* Nay, I could go 
back into the mythical teaching of the most 
ancient times, and show you how the great 
people, — by one of whose princesses it was 
appointed that the Law-giver of all the earth 
should be educated, rather than by his own 
kindred; — how that great Egyptian people, 
wisest then of nations, gave to their Spirit of 
Wisdom the form of a woman; and into her 
hand, for a symbol, the weaver's shuttle: and 
how the name and the form of that spirit; 
adopted, believed, and obeyed by the Greeks, 
became that Athena of the olive-helm and 
cloudy shield, to whose faith you owe, down 
to this date, whatever you hold most precious 
in art, in literature, or in types of national virtue. 

4 m tn 

€[ But I will not wander into this distant and 
mythical element; I will only ask you to give 
its legitimate value to the testimony of these 
great poets and men of the world, — consistent 
as you see it is on this head. I will ask 
you whether it can be supposed that these 
men, in the main work of their lives, are amusing 
themselves with a fictitious and idle view of the 

34 



relations between man and woman; — nay, 
worse than fictitiotjs or idle; for a thing may 
be imaginary, yet desirable, if it were possible; 
btrt this, their ideal of women, is, according to 
our common idea of the marriage relation, 
wholly tindesirable. The woman, we say, is not 
to guide, nor even to think, for herself* The 
man is always to be the wiser; he is to be the 
thinker, the rder, the superior in knowledge 
and discretion, as in power* Is it not somewhat 
important to make up our minds on this matter ? 
Are all these great men mistaken, or are we? 
Are Shakespeare and ^schylus, Dante, and 
Homer, merely dressing dolls for us; or, worse 
than doUs, unnatural visions, the realization 
of which, were it possible, would bring anarchy 
into all households and ruin into all affection ? 

A ^ ^ 

fl Thus much, then, respecting the relations 
of lovers I believe you will accept. But what 
we too often doubt is the fitness of the continu- 
ance of such a relation throughout the whole 
of human life* We think it right in the lover 
and mistress, not in the husband and wife. 
That is to say, we think that a reverent and 
tender duty is due to one whose affection we 
still doubt, and whose character we as yet do 
but partially and distantly discern; and that 
this reverence and duty are to be withdrawn 
when the affection has become wholly and 

35 



limitlessly our own, and the character has been 
so sifted and tried that we fear not to entrust 
it with the happiness of our lives. Do yoti not 
see how ignoble this is, as well as how tinreason- 
able? Do you not feel that marriage — when 
it is marriage at all — is only the seal which 
marks the avowed transition of temporary into 
tintiring service, and of fitftil into eternal love ? 

«l 4 it 

t[ I have been trying, thus far, to show yoti 
what shotild be the place, and what the power 
of woman. Now, secondly, we ask. What kind 
of education is to fit her for these ? 

tt # 4 

([ And if yott indeed think this a true con- 
ception of her office and dignity, it will not be 
difficult to trace the course of education which 
would fit her for the one, and raise her to the 
other. 

4 # ii 

<[ The first of our duties to her -^ no thought- 
ful persons now doubt this — is to secure for 
her such physical training and exercise as may 
confirm her health, and perfect her beauty; the 
highest refinement of that beauty being unat- 
tainable without splendor of activity and of 
delicate strength. To perfect her beauty, I 
say, and increase its power; it cannot be too 

36 



powerftjl, nor shed its sacred light too far: only 
remember that all physical freedom is vain to 
produce beattty without a corresponding free- 
dom of heart* 

4 4 4 

41 Do not think yoti can make a girl lovely, 
if you do not make her happy* There is not 
one restraint you put on a good girl's nature — ■ 
there is not one check you give to her instincts 
of affection or of effort — which will not be 
indelibly written on her features, with a hard- 
ness which is all the more painful because it takes 
away the brightness from the eyes of innocence, 
and the charm from the brow of virtue* 

4 4 4 

€[ The perfect loveliness of a woman's counte- 
nance can only consist in that majestic peace, 
which is founded in the memory of happy and 
useful years, — full of sweet records; and from 
the joining of this with that yet more majestic 
childishness, which is still full of change and 
promise; — opening always —- modest at once,, 
and bright, with hope of better things to be 
won, and to be bestowed. There is no old age 
where there is still that promise — it is eternal 
youth. 

4 4 4 

C Give such a girl any true work that will 
make her active in the dawn, and weary at 

37 



night, with the consciousness that her fellow 
creatures have indeed been the better for her day, 
and the powerless sorrow of her enthusiasm 
will transform itself into a majesty of radiant 
and beneficent peace. 

1^ 4 4 

C[ The moment we can use our possessions to 
any good purpose ourselves, the instinct of 
communicating that use to others rises side by 
side with our power* If you can read a book 
rightly^ you will want others to hear it; if you 
can enjoy a picture rightly, you will want others 
to see it. Once fix your desire on anything 
useless, and all the purest pride and folly in 
your heart will mix with the desire, and make 
you at last wholly inhuman, a mere ugly lump 
of stomach and suckers, like a cuttle-fish. 

m « i« 

€1 It seems to me, on the whole, that the 
feelings of the purest and most mightily pas- 
sioned human souls are likely to be the truest. 
Not, indeed, if they do not desire to know the 
truth, or blind themselves to it that they may 
please themselves with passion; for then they 
are no longer pure: but if, continually seeking 
and accepting the truth as far as it is discernible, 
they trust their Maker for the integrity of the 
instincts he has gifted them with, and rest 

38 



in the sense of a higher trtJth which they cannot 

demonstrate, I think they will be most in the 

right, so« 

n^ td t% 

fl The sense, to a healthy mind, of being 
strengthened or enervated by reading, is just 
as definite and unmistakable as the sense, to 
a healthy body, of being in fresh or fottl air: 
and no more arrogance is involved in forbidding 
the reading of an unwholesome book, than in 
a physician's ordering the windows to be opened 
in a sick-room. There is no question whatever 
concerning these matters, with any person who 
honestly desires to be informed about them; — 
the real arrogance is only in expressing judg- 
ments, either of books or anything else, respect- 
ing which we have taken no trouble to be in- 
formed. 

4 m id 

C I have nothing to do, nor have you, with 
what is happening in space (or possibly may 
happen in time); we have only to attend to 
what is happening here — and now. Yonder, 
stars are rising. Have you ever noticed their 
order, heard their ancient names, thought of 
what they were, as teachers, ^ lecturers,'' in 
that large public hall of the night, to the wisest 
men of old? Have you ever thought of the 
direct promise to you yourselves that you may 
be like them if you will ? " They that be wise, 

39 



shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; 
and they that tarn many to righteousness, as 
the stars, for ever and ever/' 

iH ^ tt 

C - 1 mtist do what I think right/' How 
often is this sentence uttered and acted on — 
bravely — nobly — innocently; btit always — 
because of its egotism — erringly* You must 
not do what you think right, but, whether you 
or anybody think, or don't think it, what is 
right* 

# tH # 

€1**1 must act according to the dictates of 
my conscience/' 

td «l K| 

41 By no means, my conscientious friend, 
unless you are quite sure that yours is not the 
conscience of an ass* 

Kl 4 m 

€[ Since all noble persons hitherto existent 
in the world have trusted in the government 
of it by a supreme Spirit, and in that trust, or 
faith, have performed all their great actions, 
the history of these persons will finally mean 
the history of their faith; and the sum of intel- 
lectual education will be the separation of what 
is inhuman in such faiths, and therefore perish- 
ing, from what is human, and, for human crea- 
tures, eternally true* 

40 



C^ For all the arts of mankind and womankind 
are only rightly learned, or practised, when they 
are so with the definite purpose of pleasing or 
teaching others. A child dancing for its own 
delight, — a Iamb leaping, — or a fawn at play, 
are happy and holy creatures; btit they are not 
artists. An artist is — and recollect this defini- 
tion (put in capitals for quick reference),-— 
a person who has submitted to a law which it 
was painful to obey, that he may bestow a 
delight which it is gracious to bestow. 

C Of all attainable liberties, then, be sure 
first to strive for leave to be useful. Independ- 
ence you had better cease to talk of, for you are 
dependent not only on every act of people whom 
you never heard of, who are living round you, 
but on every past act of what has been dust 
for a thousand years. So also, does the course 
of a thousand years to come, depend upon the 
little perishing strength that is in you. 

^ ii # 

C Little enough, and perishing, often without 
reward, however well spent. Understand that. 
Virtue does not consist in doing what will be 
presently paid, or even paid at all, to you, the 
virtuous person. It may so chance; or may not. 
It will be paid, some day; but the vital condition 



of it, as virtue, is that it shall be content in its 
own deedf and desirous rather that the pay of 
it, if any, should be for others. 

it td m 

€1 There are three material things, not only 
useful, but essential to life. No one ** knows 
how to live *' till he has got them. 

td m 1% 

C These are, pure air, water, and earth. 

id id 4 

41 There are three immaterial things, not only 
useful, but essential to life. No one knows how 
to live till he has got them also. 

4 id id 

C These are, admiration, hope, and love. 

4 4 4 

<[ Admiration — the power of discerning and 
taking delight in what is beautiful in visible 
form, and lovely in human character? and, 
necessarily, striving to produce what is beautiful 
in form; and to become what is lovely in char- 
acter. 

4 4 4 

il Hope — the recognition, by the true fore- 
sight, of better things to be reached hereafter, 
whether by ourselves or others; necessarily 

42 



isstiing in the straightforward and tindisap- 
pointablc effort to advance, according to otjr 
proper power, the gaining of them* 

4 4 4 

<I. Love, both of family and neighbor, faith- 
ful, and satisfied* 

4 4 4 

C Mtisic is the nearest at hand, the most 
orderly, the most delicate, and the most perfect, 
of all bodily pleastjres; it is also the only one 
which is eqtially helpful to all the ages of man, 

— helpful from the nurse's song to her infant, to 
the music, unheard of others, which often, if 
not most frequently, haunts the death-bed of 
pure and innocent spirits* And the action 
of the deceiving or devilish power is in nothing 
shown quite so distinctly among us at this day, 

— not even in our commercial dishonesties, nor 
in our social cruelties, — as in its having been 
able to take away music, as an instrument of 
education, altogether; and to enlist it almost 
wholly in the service of superstition on the one 
hand, and of sensuality on the other. 

4 4 4 

C To know anything whatever about God, 
you must begin by being Just. 

43 



<I. Fix, then, this in yo«r mind as the guiding 
principle of all fight practical labor, and source 
of all healthful life energy, — that yottr art is to 
be the praise of something that yoti love. It 
may be only the praise of a shell or a stone; it 
may be the praise of a hero; it may be the praise 
of God; your rank as a living creature is deter- 
mined by the height and breadth of your love; 
but, be you small or great, what healthy art 
is possible to you must be the expression of 
your true delight in a real thing, better than the 
art. 

4 id 4 

fl This is the main lesson I have been teach- 
ing, so far as I have been able, through my whole 
life. Only that picture is noble, which is painted 
in love of the reality. It is a law which embraces 
the highest scope of art; it is one also which 
guides in security the first steps of it. If you 
desire to draw, that you may represent some- 
thing that you care for, you will advance swiftly 
and safely. If you desire to draw, that you may 
make a beautiful drawing, you will never make 
one. 

it m 4 

<t And this simplicity of purpose is further 
useful in closing all discussions of the respective 
grace or admirableness of method. The best 
painting is that which most completely repre- 

44 



sents what it undertakes to represent, as the 
best language is that which most clearly says 
what it undertakes to say. 

td m tn 

CYou, tender and delicate women, for 
whom, and by whose command, all true battle 
has been, and must ever be; you would perhaps 
shrink now, though you need not, from the 
thought of sitting as queens above set lists 
where the jousting game might be mortal* How 
much more, then, ought you to shrink from the 
thought of sitting above a theatre pit, in which 
even a few condemned slaves were slaying each 
other only for your delight! And do you not 
shrink from the fact of sitting above a theatre 
pit, where, — not condemned slaves, — but the 
best and bravest of the poor sons of your people, 
slay each other, — not man to man, — as the 
coupled gladiators; but race to race, in duel 
of generations You would tell me, perhaps, 
that you do not sit to see this; and it is indeed 
true, that the women of Europe — those who 
have no heart-interest of their own at peril in 
the contest — draw the curtains of their boxes, 
and muffle the openings; so that from the pit 
of the circus of slaughter, there may reach them 
only at intervals a half-heard cry and a murmur, 
as of the wind's sighing, when myriads of souls 
expire. They shut out the death-cries; and 

45 



are happy, and talk wittily among themselves* 
That is the utter literal fact of what otir ladies 
do in their pleasant lives* 

€[ And now let me turn for a moment to yoa, 
— wives and maidens, who are the souls of 
soldiers; to yoti, — mothers, who have devoted 
yotir children to the great hierarchy of war. 
Let me ask yoti to consider what part yoti have 
to take for the aid of those who love yoti; for 
if yoti fail in yotir part they cannot ftilfil theirs; 
stich absolute helpmates you are that no man 
can stand without that help, nor labor in his 
own strength. 

4 m i« 

<[ I know yotir hearts, and that the truth of 
them never fails when an hotir of trial comes 
which yoti recognize for stich. Btit yoti know 
not when the hotir of trial first finds yoti, nor 
when it verily finds yoti. Yoti imagine that you 
are only called upon to wait and to stiffer; to 
surrender and to mourn. You know that you 
must not weaken the hearts of your husbands 
and lovers, even by the one fear of which those 
hearts are capable, — the fear of parting from 
you, or of causing you grief. Through weary 
years of separation; through fearful expectan- 
cies of uflinown fate; through the tenfold 
bitterness of the sorrow which might so easily 

46 



have been joy, and the tenfold yearning for 
gloriotis life struck down in its prime — through 
all these agonies you fail not, and never will faiL 
Btit your trial is not in these* To be heroic in 
danger is little; — you are Englishwomen* To 
be heroic in change and sway of fortune is little; 
— for do you not love ? To be patient through 
the great chasm and pause of loss is little; — 
for do you not still love in heaven ? But to be 
heroic in happiness; to bear yourselves gravely 
and righteously in the dazzling of the sunshine 
of morning; not to forget the God in whom you 
trust, when He gives you most; not to fail those 
who trust you, when they seem to need you 
least; this is the difficult fortitude. It is not in 
the pining of absence, not in the peril of battle, 
not in the wasting of sickness, that your prayer 
should be most passionate, or your guardianship 
most tender. Pray, mothers and maidens, for 
your young soldiers in the bloom of their pride; 
pray for them, while the only dangers round 
them are in their own wayward wills; watch 
you, and pray, when they have to face, not death, 
but temptation* But it is this fortitude also for 
which there is the crowning reward* Believe 
me, the whole course and character of your 
lovers' lives is in your hands; what you would 
have them be, they shall be, if you not only 
desire to have them so, but deserve to have 
them so; for they are but mirrors in which you 
will see yourselves imaged* If you are frivolous, 

47 



they will he so also; if yoti have no understand- 
ing of the scope of their duty, they also will for- 
get it; they will listen, — they can listen, — 
to no other interpretation of it than that uttered 
from your Iips« Bid them be brave; — they 
will be brave for you; bid them be cowards; 
and how noble soever they be, they will quail 
for you^ Bid them be wise, and they will be 
wise for you; mock at their counsel, they will 
be fools for you; such and so absolute is your 
rule over them* 

it «l 4 

C You fancy, perhaps, as you have been told 
so often, that a wife's rule should only be over 
her husband's house, not over his mind. Ah, 
no! the true rule is just the reverse of that; a 
true wife, in her husband's house, is his servant; 
it is in his heart that she is queen. Whatever 
of the best he can conceive, it is her part to be; 
whatever of highest he can hope, it is hers to 
promise; all that is dark in him she must purge 
into purity; all that is failing in him she must 
strengthen into truth: from her, through all the 
world's clamor, he must win his praise; in her, 
through all the world's warfare, he must find 
his peace. 

4 4 K| 

<t Yet, truly, if it might be, I, for one, would 
fain join in the cadence of hammer-strokes that 
should beat swords into ploughshares; and that 

48 



this cannot be, is not the fault of us men. It is 
your fault. Wholly yours. Only by your com- 
mand, or by your permission, can any contest 
take place among us. And the real, final reason 
for all the poverty, misery, and rage of battle, 
throughout Europe, is simply that you women, 
however good, however religious, however self- 
sacrificing for those whom you love, are too 
selfish and too thoughtless to take pains for any 
creature out of your own immediate circles. 
You fancy that you are sorry for the pain of 
others. Now I just tell you this, that if the usual 
course of war, instead of unroofing peasants' 
houses, and ravaging peasants' fields, merely 
broke the china upon your own drawing-room 
tables, no war in civilized countries would last 
a week. I tell you more, that at whatever mo- 
ment you chose to put a period to war, you 
could do it with less trouble than you take any 
day to go out to dinner. You know or at least 
you might know if you would think, that every 
battle you hear of has made many widows and 
orphans. We have, none of us, heart enough 
truly to mourn with these. But at least we 
might put on the outer symbols of mourning 
with them. Let but every Giristian lady who 
has conscience toward God, vow that she will 
mourn, at least outwardly, for His killed crea- 
tures. Your praying is useless, and your church- 
going mere mockery of God, if you have not 
plain obedience in you enough for this. Let 

49 



every lady in the tipper classes of civilized 
Etjrope simply vow that, while any cruel war 
proceeds, she will wear black — a mute's black, 
with no jewel, no ornament, no excuse for, or 
evasion into, prettiness, — I tell you again, no 
war would last a week. 



50 




NATURE STUDIES 

|HE living inhabitation of the 
world, — the grazing and nest- 
ing in it, — the spiritual power 
of the air, the rocks, the waters, 
— to be in the midst of it, and 
rejoice and wonder at it, and 
help it if I could, — happier 
if it needed no help of mine, — this was the 
essential love of Nature in me, this the root of 
all that I have usefully become, and the light 
of all that I have rightly learned* 

« td 4 

fl As the art of life is learned, it will be found 
at last that all lovely things are also necessary: 
— the wild flower by the wayside, as well as 
the tended com; and the wild birds and crea- 
tures of the forest, as well as the tended cattle: 
because man doth not live by bread only, but 
also by the desert manna: by every wondrous 
word and unknowable work of God* 

4 «l 4 

C Instead of supposing the love of Nature 
necessarily connected with the faithlessness of 

51 



the age, I believe it is connected properly with 
the benevolence and liberty of the age; that 
it is precisely the most healthy element which 
distinctively belongs to us; and that out of it, 
cultivated no longer in levity or ignorance, 
but in earnestness and as a duty, results will 
spring of an importance at present inconceivable; 
and lights arise, which, for the first time in 
man's history, will reveal to him the true nature 
of his life, the true field for his energies, and the 
true relations between him and his Maker* 

4 4 ii 

C Ideas of beauty are among the noblest 
which can be presented to the human mind, 
invariably exalting and purifying it according 
to their degree; and it would appear that we 
are intended by the Deity to be constantly 
under their influence, because there is not one 
single object in Nature which is not capable of 
conveying them, and which, to the rightly 
perceiving mind, does not present an incalculably 
greater number of beautiful than of deformed 
parts; there being in fact scarcely anything, 
in pure, undiseased nature, like positive de- 
formity, but only degrees of beauty, or such 
slight and rare points of permitted contrast 
as may render all around them more valuable 
by their opposition, spots of blackness in creation, 
to make its colors felt. 

52 



fl Whenever people don't look at Nattire, 
they always think they can improve her. 

4 td H 

C The real majesty of the appearance of the 
thing to tis, depends apon the degree in which 
we ourselves possess the power of understanding 
it, — that penetrating, possession-taking power 
of the imagination — the very life of the man, 
considered as a seeing creature. 

tH 4 4 

C Examine the nature of your own emotion 
(if you feel it) at the sight of the Alp, and you 
will find all the brightness of that emotion hang- 
ing, like dew on gossamer, on a curious web of 
subtle fancy and imperfect knowledge. 

4 4 4 

€[ By the Word, or Voice, or Breath, or 
Spirit, the heavens and earth, and all the host 
of them, were made; and in it they exist. It 
is your life; and speaks to you always, so long 
as you live nobly. ... It may come to you in 
clouds — it may come to you in the stillness 
of deserts. 

4 4 4 

€1 While the divine laws of seed-time which 
cannot be recalled, harvests which cannot be 

53 



hastened, and winter in which no man can 
work, compel the impatiences and coveting of 
his heart into labor too submissive to be anxious, 
and rest too sweet to be wanton. 

^ ^ ^ 

fl The woods, which I had only looked on as 
wilderness, fulfilled I then saw, in their beauty, 
the same laws which guided the clouds, divided 
the light, and balanced the wave, f* He hath 
made everything beautiful, in his time,*' became 
for me thenceforward the interpretation of the 
bond between the human mind and all visible 
things. 

^ ^ ^ 

C The truths of Nature are one eternal change 
• — one infinite variety. There is no bush on the 
face of the globe exactly like another bush; 
there are no two trees in the forest whose boughs 
bend into the same network; nor two leaves on 
the same tree which could not be told one from 
the other, nor two waves in the sea exactly alike. 

m t^ tn 

C The work of the great spirit of Nature is as 
deep and unapproachable in the lowest as in the 
noblest objects — the Divine Mind is as visible 
in its full energy of operation on every lowly 
bank and mouldering stone, as in the lifting 
of the pillars of heaven, and settling the founda- 

54 



tion of the earth* And to the rightly perceiving 
mind, there is the same infinity, the same 
majesty, the same power, the same unity, and 
the same perfection, manifest in the casting 
of the clay as in the scattering of the cIo«d, in 
the mouldering of the dust as in the kindling 
of the day-star. 

i« 4 4 

C Men of any high mental power must be seri- 
ous, whether in ancient or modem days; a 
certain degree of reverence for fair scenery 
is found in all our great writers without excep- 
tion* 

4 m # 

C You may rest assured that those who do 
not care for Nature, cannot see her. A few of 
her phenomena lie on the surface: the nobler 
number lie deep, and are the reward of watching, 
and of thought. 

td m Ki 

C Nature keeps whatever she has done best,, 
close sealed, until it is regarded with reverence* 

m tt « 

fl You may enjoy a thing legitimately because 
it is rare, and cannot be seen often (as you do a 
fine aurora, or a sunset, or an unusually lovely 
flower): that is Nature's way of stimulating 
your attention. 

55 



tl The simplest forms of Nature are strangely 
animated by the sense of the Divine presence; 
the trees and flowers seem all^ in a sort, children 
of God. 

^ ^ ^ 

il There is a decisive instant in all matters; 
and if you look languidly yoti are sure to miss 
it. Nature seems always, somehow, trying to 
make you miss it* ** I will see that through/' 
you must say, ** without turning my head; '^ 
or you won't see the trick of it at alL 

4 m 4 

C - Not enjoying the beauty of things/' goes 
ever so much deeper than mere blindness. 

td m 4 

C^ All Nature, with one voice — with one 
glory, is set to teach you reverence for the life 
communicated to you from the Father of Spirits. 
The song of birds, and their plumage; the scent 
of flowers, their color, their very existence, are 
in direct connection with the mystery of that 
communicated life. 

€[ Have no fear in judging between Nature 
and Art, so only that you love both. If you 
can love one only, then let it be Nature: you 
are safe with her: but do not then attempt to 
judge the Art, to which you do not care to give 

56 



thotight, Of time. Btrt if you love both, you 
may judge between them fearlessly; you may 
estimate the last, by its making you remember 
the first; and giving you the same kind of joy. 
4 4 4 

€1 Forms are not beautiful because they are 
copied from Nature; only it is out of the power 
of man to conceive beauty without her aid. 

# m 4 

<t High art consists neither in altering nor 
in improving Nature; but in seeking throughout 
Nature for *.* whatsoever things are lovely, and 
whatsoever things are pure;" in loving these, 
in displaying to the utmost of the painter's 
power such loveliness as is in them, and directing 
the thoughts of others to them by winning art, 
or gentle emphasis. 

ti 4 4 

C The highest art in all kinds is that which 
conveys the most truth. 

4 « tH 

C He who is closest to Nature is best. All 
rules are useless, all labor is useless, if you do not 
give facts. 

tH tH 4 

C All most lovely forms and thoughts are di- 
rectly taken from natural objects. 

57 



C The first thing we have to ask of decoration 
is that it should indicate strong liking, and that 
honestly. 

td 4 K| 

CThe second requirement in decoration 
is a sign of otir liking the right thing* And the 
right thing to be liked is God^s work, which He 
made for our delight and contentment in this 
world. And all noble ornamentation is the 
expression of man^s delight in God's work* 

« 4 4 

<I This infinite universe is unfathomable, 
inconceivable, in its whole; every human 
creature must slowly spell out, and long con- 
template, such part of it as may be possible for 
him to reach; then set forth what he has learned 
of it for those beneath him; extricating it from 
infinity, as one gathers a violet out of the grass; 
one does not improve either violet or grass in 
gathering it, but one makes the flower visible; 
and the human being has to make its power upon 
his own heart visible also, and to givz it the 
honor of the good thoughts it has raised up in 
him, and to write upon it the history of his own 
soul* 

ti td « 

<[ Human Art can only flourish when its 
dew is affection; its air. Devotion; the rock 
of its roots. Patience; and its sunshine, God* 

58 



€1 For prolonged entertainment, no pkttire 
can be compared with the wealth of interest 
which may be iound in the herbage of the poor- 
est field, or blossoms of the narrowest copse* 

it 4 4 

€[ AU art, and all Nattire, depend on the 
''disposition of masses/' Painting, sculpture, 
music and poetry, depend equally on the ^f, pro- 
portion,'' whether of colors, stones, notes, or 
words. Proportion is a principle, not of archi- 
tecture, but of existence. It is by the law of 
proportion that stars shine, that mountains 
stand, and rivers flow. 

i« 4 4 

41 The word truth, as applied to art, signifies 
the faithful statement, either to the mind or 
senses, of any fact of Nature. 

4 td 4 

<[ I would rather teach drawing that my 
pupils may learn to love Nature, than teach 
the looking at Nature that they may learn to 
draw. 

4 4 « 

<[ The moral temper of the workman is shown 
by his lovely forms and thoughts to express, as 
well as by the force of his hand in expression. 

59 



C The good architects have generally been 
content, with God's arch, the arch of the rain- 
bow and of the apparent heaven, and which 
the stin shapes for us as it sets and rises. 

4 4 tH 

fl Good painting, like nattire's own work, is 
Infinite, and unreducible* 

4 4 4 

41 Did yoii ever see one sunrise like another ? 
does not God vary His clouds for you every 
morning and every night ? though, indeed, there 
is enough in the disappearing and appearing 
of the great orb above the rolling of the world, 
to interest all of us, one would think, for as 
many times as we shall see it; and yet the aspect 
is changed for us daily. 

4 4 4 

€1 Are not all natural things, it may be asked, 
as lovely near as far away ? Nay, not so. Look 
at the clouds, and watch the delicate sculpture 
of their alabaster sides, and the rounded lustre 
of their magnificent rolling. They are meant 
to be beheld far away; they were shaped for 
their place, high above your head; approach 
them, and they fuse into vague mists, or whirl 
away in fierce fragments of thunderous vapor. 

60 



C Never if you can help it, miss seeing the 
sunset and the dawn. 

« 4 4 

C The black thing, which is one of the pretti- 
est of the very few pretty black things in the 
world, is called ** Toarmaline/' It may be 
transparent, and green or red as well as black, 
btrt this is the commonest state of it, — 
opaque, and as black as jet. 

4 4 4 

€1 Your power of seeing mountains cannot be 
developed either by your vanity, your curiosity, 
or your love of muscular exercise. It depends 
on the cultivation of the instrument of sight 
itself, and on the soul that uses it. 

4 4 4 

<t One of the principal charms of mountain 
scenery is its solitude . . . another feeling with 
which one is impressed during a mountain 
ramble is humility. 

4 4 4 

C There is a sublimity and majesty in monot- 
ony which there is not in rapid or frequent 
variation. This is true throughout all Nature. 
The greater part of the sublimity of the sea 
depends on its monotony. 

61 



C Whenever a nation is in its right mind, 
it always has a deep sense of divinity in the gift 
of rain from heaven; filling its heart with food 
and gladness; and all the more when that gift 
becomes gentle and perennial in the flowing of 
springs* 

4 4 4 

<t See that no day passes in which yoti do not 
make yourself a somewhat better creattire; and 
in order to do that, find out, first, what you arc 
now* 

4 4 4 

41 Do not think of your faults; still less of 
others' faults; in every person who comes near 
you, look for what is good and strong; honor 
that; rejoice in it; and, as you can, try to 
imitate it; and your faults will drop off, like 
dead leaves, when their time comes. 

4 4 4 

C Let every dawn of morning be to you as the 
beginning of life; and every setting sun be to 
you as its close, — then let every one of these 
short lives leave its sure record of some kindly 
thing done for others, some goodly strength 
or knowledge gained for yourself. 

4 4 4 

C What fairy palaces we may build of beauti- 
ful thoughts! proof against all adversities. 
62 



Bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble his- 
tories, faithful sayings, treastire-hotises of pre- 
cious and restful thoughts, which care cannot 
disturb, nor pain make gloomy, nor poverty 
take away from us — homes built without hands 
for our souls to live in* 

4 4 4 

CL That your neighbor should, or should not, 
remain content with fiis position is not your 
business: but it is very much your business 
to remain content with your own. . ♦ . We 
need examples of people who, leaving Heaven 
to decide whether they are to rise in the world, 
decide for themselves that they will be happy 
in it, and have resolved to seek — not greater 
wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, 
but deeper felicity; making the first of posses- 
sions, self-possession; and honoring themselves 
in the harmless pride and calm pursuits of peace. 

4 4 4 

C The world would be a place of peace, if 
we were all peace-makers. 

4 4 4 

C "Work is only done well when it is done with 
a will; and no man has a thoroughly sound will 
unless he knows he is doing what he should, and 
is in his place. 

63 



H It is only by labor that thought can he 
made healthy^ and only by thought that labor 
can be made happy. 

tH 4 4 

C The weakest among tis has a gift, however 
seemingly trivial, which is peculiar to him, and 
which, worthily used, will be a gift also to his 
race forever. 

4 4 4 

C Wise work is cheerful, as a child's work is. 
4 4 4 

fl Without the resolution in your hearts to do 
good work, so long as your right hands have 
motion in them; and to do it, whether the issue 
be that you die or live, no life worthy the 
name will ever be possible to you, while, in once 
forming the resolution that your work is to be 
well done, life is really won, here and forever. 

4 4 4 

C All wise work is mainly threefold in char- 
acter — It is honest, useful and cheerful. 

4 4 4 

<t Education in its deeper sense is not the 
equalizer, but the discerner of men. 
64 



€1 The entire object of itxse edtrcation is to 
make people not merely do the right things, hut 
enjoy the right things — not merely indtistriotjs, 
but to love industry — not merely learned, but 
to love knowledge — not merely pure, hut to 
love purity, — not merely just, but to hunger 
and thirst after justice* 

4 4 4 

C Reverence and compassion we are to teach 
primarily, and with these, as the bond and 
guardian of them. Truth of spirit and word, of 
thought and sight* Truth, earnest and passion- 
ate, sought for like a treasure, and kept like a 
crown. 

4 4 4 

C Violate truth wilfully, in the slightest par- 
ticular, or, at least, get into the habit of violating 
it, and all kinds of failure and error will surround 
and haunt you to your falh 

4 4 4 

C It is not easy to be accurate in an account 
of anything however simple. 

4 4 4 

C The absolute disdain of all lying belongs 
rather to Christian chivalry than to mere high 
breeding. 

65 



tl Imitation is like charity, when it is done 
for love it is lovely; when it is done for show, 
hateful. 

4 4 «( 

<J The simple statement of the trtiths of 
nature mtist in itself be pleasing to every order 
of mind, because every truth of nature is more or 
less beautiful. 

4 « 4 

<[ All great languages invariably utter great 
things, and command them; they cannot be 
mimicked but by obedience; the truth of them 
is inspiration because it is not only vocal but 
vital, and you can only learn to speak as those 
men spoke, by learning what those men were. 

4 4 4 

C You ought to be glad in thinking how 
much more beauty God has made, than human 
eyes can ever see. 

4 4 4 

C A good law is one that holds, whether you 
recognize and pronounce it or not; a bad law 
is one that cannot hold, however much you 
ordain and pronounce iU 

4 4 4 

fl The only right principle of action here, is 
to consider good and evil as defined by our 
66 



natural sense of both; and to strive to promote 
the one, and to conquer the other, with as hearty 
endeavor as if there were, indeed, no other 
world than this. 

td td 4 

C^ Consider whether we ought not to be more 
in the habit of seeking honor from out descend- 
ants than from our ancestors; thinking it better 
to be nobly remembered than to be nobly bom; 
and striving so to live. 

4 4 i| 

<t What the woman is to be within her gates, 
as the centre of order, the balm of distress, and 
the mirror of beatrty, that she is also to be with- 
out her gates, where order is more difficult, 
distress m.ore imminent, loveliness more rare. 

1% 4 tH 

C Beauty has been appointed by the Deity 
to be one of the elements by which the human 
soul is continually sustained; it is therefore to be 
found more or less in all natural objects, but in 
order that we may not satiate ourselves with it, 
and weary of it, it is rarely granted to us in its 
utmost degree. 

«l it ti 

C Do you think you can know yourself by 
looking into yourself? Never. You can know 
what you are only by looking out of yourself. 

67 



C However good yoti may be, yoti have 
fatilts; — however ddl yo« may be, yoxs can 
find otit what some of them are; and however 
slight they may be, yoti had better make some 

— not too painf til, btit patient — effort to get 
qtiit of them» 

m 1% 4 

fl None can estimate the power manifested in 
victory, tmless they have personally meastired 
the strength to be overcome. 

1% « tH 

il Twenty people can gain money for one 
who can tjse it; and the vital qtiestion, for indi- 
vidtial and for nation, is never ** how mtich do 
they make ? *' but ** to what ptirpose do they 

spend ? '" 

4 « td 

41 If there be any one principle more widely 
than another confessed by every titterance or 
more sternly than another imprinted on every 
atom, of the visible creation, that principle 
is not Liberty, hxst Law. 

4 4 # 

<[ True knowledge is disciplined and tested 
knowledge, — not the first thought that comes, 

— so the true passion is disciplined and tested 
passion — not the first passion that comes. 

68 



<t Go to nattire in all singleness of heart, 
and walk with her laboriously and trustingly^ 
having no other thought but how best to pene- 
trate her meaning; rejecting nothing, selecting 
nothing, and scorning nothing* 

td « K| 

C Stand upon the peak of some isolated 
mountain at daybreak, when the night-mists 
first rise from off the plains, and watch their 
white and lake-like fields as they float in level 
bays and winding gulfs about the islanded 
summits of the lower hills, untouched yet by 
more than dawn, colder and more quiet than a 
windless sea under the moon of midnight* 
"Watch when the first sunbeam is sent upon the 
silver channels, how the foam of their undulating 
surface parts and passes away; and down under 
their depths the glittering city and green pasture 
lie like Atlantis, between the white paths of 
winding rivers; the flakes of light falling every 
moment faster and broader among the starry 
spires, as the wreathed surges break and vanish 
above them, and the confused crests and ridges 
of the dark hills shorten their gray shadows upon 
the plain* Wait a little longer, and you shall 
see those scattered mists rallying in the ravines 
and floating up toward you, along the winding 
valleys, till they couch in quiet masses, irides- 
cent with the morning light, upon the broad 
breasts of the higher hills, whose leagues of 

69 



massy tindtjlation will melt back and back into 
that robe of material lights tmtil they fade away, 
lost in its lustre, to appear again above, in the 
serene heaven, like a wild, bright, impossible 
dream, foandationless and inaccessible, their 
very bases vanishing in the unsubstantial and 
mocking blue of the deep lake below* Wait 
yet a little longer, and you shall see those mists 
gather themselves into white towers, and stand 
like fortresses along the promontories, massy and 
motionless, only piling with every instant higher 
and higher into the sky, and casting longer 
shadows athwart the rocks; and out of the pale 
blue of the horizon you will see forming and 
advancing a troop of narrow, dark, pointed 
■vapors, which will cover the sky, inch by inch, 
^ith their gray network, and take the light off 
the landscape with an eclipse which will stop 
the singing of the birds and the motion of the 
leaves together? and then you will see horizontal 
bars of black shadow forming under them, and 
lurid wreaths create themselves, you know not 
how, along the shoulders of the hills; you never 
see them form, but when you look back to a 
place which was clear an instant ago, there is a 
cloud on it, hanging by the precipices, as a hawk 
pauses over his prey. And then you will hear 
the sudden rush of the awakened wind, and you 
will see those watch-towers of vapor swept away 
from their foundations, and waving curtains 
of opaque rain let down to the valleys, swinging 
70 



from the burdened clouds in black, bending 
fringes, or pacing in pale columns along the lake 
level, grazing its surface into foam as they go* 
And then, as the sun sinks, you shall see the 
storm drift for an instant from off the hills, 
leaving their broad sides smoking, and loaded 
yet with snow-white, torn, steam-like rags of 
capricious vapor, now gone, now gathered 
again; while the smouldering sun, seeming not 
far away, but burning like a red-hot ball beside 
you, and as if you could reach it, plunges through 
the rushing wind and rolling cloud with headlong 
fall, as if it meant to rise no more, dyeing all the 
air about it with blood. And then you shall 
hear the fainting tempest die in the hollow of 
the night, and you shall see a green halo kindling 
on the summit of the eastern hills, brighter — 
brighter yet, till the large white circle of the slow 
moon is lifted up among the barred clouds, step 
by step, line by line; star after star she quenches 
with her kindling light, setting in their stead 
an army of pale, penetrable, fleecy wreaths in the 
heaven, to give light upon the earth, which 
move together, hand in hand, company by com- 
pany, troop by troop, so measured in their unity 
of motion, that the whole heaven seems to roll 
with them, and the earth to reel under them. 
And then wait yet for one hour, until the east 
again becomes purple, and the heaving moun- 
tains, rolling against it in darkness, like waves 
of a wild sea, are drowned one by one in the 

7J 



glory of its burning; watch the white glaciers 
blaze in their winding paths about the moun- 
tains, like mighty serpents, with scales of fire; 
watch the columnar peaks of solitary snow, 
kindling downwards, chasm by chasm, each in 
itself a new morning; their long avalanches 
cast down in keen streams brighter than the 
lightning, sending each his tribute of driven snow, 
like altar smoke, up to the heaven; the rose- 
light of their silent domes flushing that heaven 
about them and above them, piercing with purer 
light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, 
casting a new glory on every wreath as it passes 
by, until the whole heaven — one scarlet canopy 
' — is interwoven with a roof of waving flame, 
and tossing, vault beyond vault, as with the 
drifted wings of many companies of angels; 
and then, when you can look no more for glad- 
ness, and when you are bowed down with fear 
and love of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me 
who has best delivered this His message unto 



men! 



td td 4 



C Though Nature is constantly beautiful, she 
does not exhibit her highest powers of beauty 
constantly, for then they would satiate us and 
pall upon the senses. It is necessary to their 
appreciation that they should be rarely shown. 
Her finest touches are things which must be 
watched for; her most perfect passages of beauty 

72 



are the most evanescent^ She is constantly 
doing something beatitiftfl for tis, but it is some- 
thing which she has not done before and will 
not do again; — some exiiibition of her general 
powers in particular circumstances, which if 
we do not catch at the instant it is passing, 
will not be repeated for us* Now, they are these 
evanescent passages of perfected beauty, these 
perpetually varied examples of utmost power, 
which the artist ought to seek for and arrest. 

# i| 4 

€[ Mountains are, to the rest of the body of 
the earth, what violent muscular action is to 
the body of man* The muscles and tendons of 
its anatomy are, in the mountain, brought out 
with fierce and convulsive energy, full of expres- 
sion, passion, and strength; the plains and the 
lower hills are the repose and the effortless 
motion of the frame, when its muscles lie dor- 
mant and concealed beneath the lines of its 
beauty; yet ruling those lines in their every 
undulation. This, then, is the first grand 
principle of the truth of the earth. The spirit 
of the hills is action; that of the lowlands, 
repose; and between these there is to be found 
every variety of motion and of rest; from the 
inactive plain, sleeping like the firmament, with 
cities for stars, to the fiery peaks, which, with 
heaving bosoms and exulting limbs, with the 

73 



clotids drifting like hair from their bright fore- 
heads, lift up their Titan hands to Heaven, say- 
ing, if I live forever! '' 

4 td ii 

C I believe that it is not good for man to live 
among what is most beatitifal; — that he is a 
creattfre incapable of satisfaction by anything 
upon earth; and that to allow him habitually to 
possess, in any kind whatsoever, the utmost 
that earth can give, is the surest way to cast 
him into lassitude or discontents 

^ ^ ^ 

C The resources of trees are not developed 
until they have difficulty to contend with; 
neither their tenderness of brotherly love and 
harmony, till they are forced to choose their 
ways of various life where there is contracted 
room for them, talking to each other with their 
restrained branches* The various action of 
trees rooting themselves in inhospitable rocks, 
stooping to look into ravines, hiding from the 
search of glacier winds, reaching forth to the 
rays of rare sunshine, crowding down together 
to drink at sweetest streams, climbing hand in 
hand among the difficult slopes, opening in 
sudden dances round the mossy knolls, gathering 
into companies at rest among the fragrant 
fields, gliding in grave procession over the 

74 



heavenward ridges, — nothing of this can be 
conceived among the anvexed and unvaried 
felicities of the lowland forest: while to all these 
direct sources of greater beatrty are added, first 
the power of redundance, — the mere quality 
of foliage visible in the folds and on the promon- 
tories of a single Alp being greater than that 
of an entire lowland landscape (unless a view 
from some cathedral tower); and to this charm 
of redundance, that of clearer visibility, — tree 
after tree being constantly shown in successive 
height, one behind another, instead of the mere 
tops and flanks of masses, as in the plains; and 
the forms of multitudes of them continually 
defined against the clear sky, near and above, 
or against white clouds entangled among their 
branches, instead of being confused in dimness 
of distance* 

4 4 K| 

C Painting, or art generally, as such, with 
all its technicalities, difficulties, and particular 
ends, is nothing but a noble and expressive lan- 
guage, invaluable as the vehicle of thought, 
but by itself nothing* He who has learned what 
is commonly considered the whole art of paint- 
ing, that is, the art of representing any natural 
object faithfully, has as yet only learned the 
language by which his thoughts are to be ex- 
pressed* He has done just as much towards 
being that which we ought to respect as a great 

75 



painter, as a man who has learned how to express 
himself grammatically and melodiously has 
towards being a great poet. The language is, 
indeed, more difficult of acquirement in the one 
case than in the other, and possesses more power 
of delighting the sense, while it speaks to the 
intellect, but it is, nevertheless, nothing more 
than language, and all those excellences which 
are pecuSar to the painter as such, are merely 
what rhythm, melody, precision and force are 
in the words of the orator and the poet, necessary 
to their greatness, but not the tests of their 
greatness. It is not by the mode of representing 
and saying, but by what is represented and said, 
that the respective greatness either of the painter 
or the writer is to be finally determined. 

# m # 

C The fruit of Earth, and its waters, and its 
light — such as the strength of the pure rock 
can grow — such as the unthwarted sun in his 
season brings — these are your inheritance. 

Id td td 

<t Perhaps the great monotone gray of Nature 
and of Time is a better color than any that the 
human hand can give* 

id td id 

C It is with interest and reverence to be 
noted as a physical truth that in a state of 
76 



joyftil and healthy excitement the eye becomes 
more highly sensitive to the beairty of color, 
and especially to the blue and red rays, while 
in depression and disease all colors become dim 
to us* 

4 4 i| 

C. Color is, in brief terms, the type of love* 
Hence it is especially connected with the blos- 
soming of the earth; and again, with its fruits; 
also, with the spring and fall of the leaf, and with 
the morning and evening of the day, in order 
to show the waiting of love abotrt the birth and 
death of man. 

tH «l 4 

tl The Greek liked purple, as a general source 
of enjoyment better than any other color, and 
so all healthy persons who have eye for color, 
and are unprejudiced about it do. 

td 4 4 

€[ If human life be cast among trees at all, the 
love borne to them is a sure test of its purity. 

4 t(| td 

<[ Throughout all the freedom of her wildest 
foliage, Nature is resolved on expressing an 
encompassing limit: and marking a unity in the 
whole tree, caused not only by the rising of its 

77 



branches from a common root, btrt by their 
joining in one work, and being bound by a com- 
mon law. 

ti td m 

C Lovely flowers growing in the open air, are 
the proper gtiides of men to the places which 
their Maker intended them to inhabit. 

^ ^ ^ 

C Flowers, like everything else that is lovely 
in the visible world, are only to be seen rightly 
with the eyes which the God who made them 
gave iss; and neither with microscopes nor 
spectacles. . ♦ . The trse of the great mechanical 
powers may indeed sometimes be compatible 
with the due exercise of otir own; but the tise 
of instruments for exaggerating the powers of 
sight necessarily deprives us of the best pleas- 
ures of sight. A flower is to be watched as it 
grows, in its association with the earth, the air, 
and the dew; its leaves are to be seen as they 
expand in sunshine; its colors, as they em- 
broider the field, or illumine the forest. Dissect 
or magnify them, and all you discover or learn 
at last will be that oaks, roses, and daisies, are 
all made of fibres and bubbles; and these, again, 
of charcoal and water; but for all their peeping 
and probing, nobody knows how. 

78 



€L Some fifty years ago the poet Goethe dis- 
covered that all the parts of plants had a kind of 
common nature^ and would change into each 
other* Now this was a true discovery, and a 
notable one; and you will find, that, in fact, all 
plants are composed of essentially two parts — 
the leaf and root — one loving the light, the 
other darkness; one liking to be clean, the other 
to be dirty; one liking to grow for the most part 
tip, the other for the most part down; and each 
having faculties and purposes of its own* But 
the pure one, which loves the light, has, above 
all things, the purpose of being married to an- 
other leaf, and having child-leaves, and children's 
children of leaves, to make the earth fair for- 
ever* And when the leaves marry, they put 
on wedding-robes, and are more glorious than 
Solomon in all his glory, and they have feasts 
of honey, and we call them ** Flowers/' 

td 4 td 

€[ Your garden is to enable you to obtain 
such knowledge of plants as you may best 
use in the country in which you live, by com- 
municating it to others; and teaching them to 
take pleasure in the green herb, given for meat, 
and the colored flower, given for joy. 

4 id 4 

€1 Perhaps few people have ever asked them- 
selves why they admire a rose so much more 

79 



than all other flowers* If they consider, they 
will find, first that red is, in a delicately gradated 
state, the loveliest of all pure colors: and sec- 
ondly, that in the rose there is no shadow, 
except what is composed of colon 



4 4 4 

fl Flowers seem intended for the solace of 
ordinary humanity; children love them; quiet, 
tender, contented ordinary people love them as 
they grow; luxurious and disorderly people 
rejoice in them gathered. They are the cot- 
tager's treasure; and in the crowded town, 
mark, as with a little broken fragment of rain- 
bow, the windows of the workers in whose heart 
rests the covenant of peace. Passionate or 
religious minds contemplate them with fond, 
feverish intensity; the affection is seen severely 
calm in the works of many old religious painters, 
and mixed with more open and true country 
sentiment in those of our own pre-Raphaelites. 
To the child and the girl, the peasant and the 
manufacturing operative, to the grisette and 
the nun, the lover and monk, they are precious 
always. But to the men of supreme power and 
thoughtfulness, precious only at times; sym- 
bolically and pathetically often to the poets, but 
rarely for their own sake* 



80 



<t God paints the clotids and shapes the moss- 
fibres, that men may be happy in seeing Him 
at His work. 

it i« 4 

<[ Consider the art of singing, and the sim- 
plest perfect master of it (up to the limits of his 
nature) whom yoti can find — a skylark* From 
him you may learn what it is to ** sing for joy/* 

^ ^ ^ 

fl No air is sweet that is silent: it is only 
sweet when ftiU of low currents of undersotind 
— triplets of birds, and murmur and chirp of 
insects* 

^ ^ ^ 

C Note the quivering or vibration of the air 
• • ♦ first, and most intense, in the voice and 
throat of the bird: which is the air incarnate. 
... Is it not strange to think of the influence 
of this one power . ♦ . vibration? . . . How 
much of the repose — how much of the wrath, 
folly, and misery of men, has literally depended 
on this one power of the air: — on the sound of 
the trumpet and the bell — on the lark's song, 
and the bee's murmur. 

C The perfect and simple grace of bird form, 
in general, has rendered it a favorite subject with 
early sculptors, and with these schools which 



loved form more than action* • . ♦ Half the 
ornaments, at least, in Byzantine architecture, 
and a third of that of Lombardic, is composed 
of birds, either pecking at frtiit, or flowers, 
or standing on either side of a flower or vase, or 
alone, as generally the symbolical peacock* 
Btrt how mtich of our general sense of grace or 
power of motion, of serenity, peacefulness, and 
spirituality, we owe to these creatures it is 
impossible to conceive: their wings supplying 
us with almost the only means of representation 
of spiritual motion which we possess and with 
an ornamental form of which the eye is never 
weary, however meaningless or endlessly re- 
peated. 

K| # K| 

C The Bird. — It is little more than the drift 
of the air brought into form by plumes; the air 
is in all its quills, it breathes through its whole 
frame and flesh, and glows with air in its flying, 
like blown flame: it rests upon the air, subdues 
it, surpasses it, outraces it: — is the air, con- 
scious of itself, conquering itself, ruling itself. 

Ki m m 

€i Also, into the throat of the bird is given 
the voice of the air. All that in the wind itself 
is weak, wild, useless in sweetness, is knit to- 
gether in its song. As we may imagine the wild 
form of the cloud closed into the perfect form 

82 



of the bird's wings, so the wild voice of the 
cloiid into its ordered and commanded voice; 
unwearied, rippling through the clear heaven 
in its gladness, interpreting all intense passion 
through the soft spring nights, bursting into 
acclaim and rapture of choir at daybreak, or 
lisping and twittering among the boughs and 
hedges through the heat of the day, like little 
winds that only make the cowslip bells shake, 
and ruffle the petals of the wild rose. 

4 4 « 

€[ Also upon the plumes of the bird are put 
the colors of the air: on these the gold of the 
cloud that cannot be gathered by any covetous- 
ness: the rubies of the clouds — the vermilion 
of the cloud-bar, and the flame of the cloud- 
crest, and the snow of the cloud, and its shadow, 
and the melted blue of the deep wells of the sky 
— all these, seized by the creating spirit, and 
woven by Athena herself into films and threads 
of plume; with wave on wave following, and 
fading along breast, and throat, and opened 
wings, infinite as the dividing of the foam and 
the shifting of the sea-sand; — even the white 
down of the cloud seeming to flutter up between 
the stronger plumes, seen, but too soft for touch* 

K| td 4 

C And so the Spirit of the Air is put into, and 
upon this created form; and it becomes, through 

83 



twenty centtiries, the symbol of divine help, 
descending, as the Fire to speak, but as the 
Dove, to bless* 

«l 4 4 

il Every work of right art has a tendency to 
reproduce the ethical state which first developed 
it. Music, which of all the arts is most directly 
ethical in origin, is also the most direct in power 
of discipline; the first, the simplest, the most 
effective of all instruments of moral instruction, 
while in the failure and betrayal of its functions, 
it becomes the subtlest aid of moral degradation. 
Music is thus, in her health, the teacher of per- 
fect order, and is the voice of the obedience of 
angels, and the companion of the course of the 
spheres of heaven; and in her depravity she is 
also the teacher of perfect disorder and disobedi- 
ence, and the Gloria in Excelsis becomes the 
Marseillaise. 

K| 4 # 

<I Of all inorganic substances, acting in their 
own proper nature, and without assistance or 
combination, water is the most wonderful. If 
we think of it as the source of all the change- 
fulness and beauty which we have seen in 
clouds; then as the instrument by which the 
earth was modelled into symmetry, and its 
crags chiselled into grace; then as^ in the form 
of snow, it robes the mountains it has made, 
with that transcendent light which we could 

84 



not have conceived if we had not seen: then 
as it exists in the form of the torrent — in the 
iris which spans it^ in the morning mist which 
rises from it, in the deep crystalline pools which 
mirror its hanging shore, in the broad lake and 
glancing river; finally, in that which is to all 
human minds the best emblem of unwearied, 
unconquerable power, the wild, various, fantastic 
tameless unity of the sea; what shall we com- 
pare to this mighty, this universal element, for 
glory and for beauty? or how shall we follow 
its eternal changefulness of feeling? It is like 
trying to paint a souL 

Kl td K| 

CTo paint the actual play of light on the 
reflective surface, or to give the forms and fury 
of water when it begins to show itself — to 
give the flashing and rocket-like velocity of a 
noble cataract, or the precision and grace of 
the sea waves, so exquisitely modelled, though 
so mockingly transient — so mountainous in its 
form; yet so cloudlike in its motion — with its 
variety and delicacy of color, when every ripple 
and wreath has some peculiar passage of reflec- 
tion upon itself alone, and the radiating and 
scintillating sunbeams are mixed with the dim 
hues of transparent depth and dark rock below; 
to do this perfectly, is beyond the power of 
man; to do it even partially has been granted 
to but one or two* 

85 



fl That ttirbid foaming of the angry waters, — 
that tearing down of bank and rock along the 
flanks of its fury, — are no disturbances of the 
kind coarse of nature; they are beneficent 
operations of laws necessary to the existence of 
man and to the beauty of the earth. The process 
is continued more gently, but not less effectively, 
over all the surface of the lower undulating 
country; and each filtering thread of summer 
rain which trickles through the short turf 
of the uplands is bearing its own appointed 
burden of earth to be thrown down on some 
new natural garden in the dingles below* 

« it ^ 

<[ The laws of the organization of the earth 
are distinct and fixed as those of the animal 
frame, simpler and broader, but equally authori- 
tative and inviolable. ♦ ♦ . Few ever think of 
the common earth beneath their feet, as any- 
thing possessing specific form, or governed by 
steadfast principles. 

4 1(1 td 

f[ The earth, as a tormented and trembling 
ball, may have rolled in space for myriads of 
ages before humanity was formed from its dust; 
and as a devastated ruin it may continue to roll, 
when all that dust shall again have been mingled 
with ashes that never were warmed by life, or 
polluted by sin. But for us the intelligible and 

86 



substantial fact is that the earth has been 
brought, by forces we know not of, into a form 
fitted for oar habitation. 

4 4 4 

C Look at the crest of the Alps, from the 
far-away plains over which its light is cast 
when human sotils hold communion with it by 
the myriads. The child looks up to it in the 
dawn, and the husbandman in the burden and 
heat of the day, and the old man in the going 
down of the sun, and it is to them all as the celes- 
tial city on the world's horizon; dyed with the 
depth of heaven, and clothed with the calm 
of eternity. Thus was it set for holy dominion, 
by Him who marked for the sun his journey, and 
bade the moon know her going down. It was 
built for its place in the far-off sky; approach it, 
and as the sound of the voice of man dies away 
about its foundation, and the tide of human 
life, shallowed upon the vast aerial shore, is at 
last met by the Eternal, ** Here shall thy waves 
be stayed,'' the glory of its aspect fades into 
blanched fearfulness; its purple walls are rent 
into grisly rocks, its silver fretwork saddened 
into wasting snow, the storm brands of ages 
are on its heart, the ashes of its own ruin lie 
solemnly on its white raiment. 
4 4 4 

C Consider, whether we can justly refuse to 
attribute to their mountain scenery some share 

87 



in giving the Greeks and Italians their intellec- 
ttial lead among the nations of Europe* 

# 4 td 

C There is not a single spot of land in either 
of these countries from which mountains are 
not discernible. The mountain outlines seen 
from Sparta, Corinth, Athens, Rome, Florence, 
Pisa, Verona, are of consummate beauty; and 
whatever dislike or contempt may be traceable 
in the mind of the Greeks for mountain tugged- 
ness, their placing the shrine of Apollo under 
the cliffs of Delphi, and his throne upon Parnas- 
sus, was a testimony to all succeeding time that 
they themselves attributed the best part of their 
intellectual inspiration to the powers of the hills. 
Nor would it be difficult to show that every 
great writer of either of these nations, however 
little definite regard he might manifest for the 
landscape of his country, had been mentally 
formed and disciplined by it, so that even such 
enjoyment as Homer's of the ploughed ground 
and poplar groves owes its intensity and delicacy 
to the excitement of the imagination produced, 
without his own consciousness, by other and 
grander features of the scenery to which he had 
been accustomed from a child; and differs in 
every respect from the tranquil, vegetative, and 
prosaic affection with which the same ploughed 
land and poplars would be regarded by a native 
of the Netherlands. 



C The higher mountains have their scenes of 
power and vastness, their blue precipices and 
clottdlike snows; why should they also have 
the best and fairest colors given to their fore- 
ground rocks, and overburden the human mind 
with wonder, while the less majestic scenery, 
tempting us to the observance of details for 
which amidst the higher mountains we had no 
admiration left, is yet in the beauty of those very 
details, as inferior as it is in its scale of magni- 
tude? I believe the answer must be, simply, 
that it is not good for man to live among what is 
most beautiful; that he is a creature incapable 
of satisfaction by anything upon earth; and that 
to allow him habitually to possess, in any kind 
whatsoever, the utmost that earth can give, 
is the surest way to cast him into lassitude or 
discontent. 

td ^ 4 

C No human capacity ever yet saw the whole 
of a thing; but we may see more and more of it 
the longer we look. Every individual temper 
will see something different in it; but supposing 
the tempers honest, all the differences are there. 
Every advance in our acuteness of perception 
will show us something new; but the old and 
first discerned things will still be there, not 
falsified, only modified and enriched by the 
new perceptions, becoming continually more 

89 



bcautiftfl in its harmony with them, and more 
approved as a part of the Infinite trtJth^ 

4 td td 

C We find the beauty of the buildings of the 
leaves consists, from the first step of it to the 
last, in its showing their perfect fellowship; 
and a single aim uniting them under circum- 
stances of various distress, trial and pleasure. 
Without the fellowship, no beauty; without the 
steady purpose, no beauty; without trouble, 
and death, no beauty; without individual pleas- 
ure, freedom, and caprice, so far as may be con- 
sistent with the universal good, no beauty. 

4 4 4 

€[ There is no climate, no place, and scarcely 
an hour, in which nature does not exhibit color 
which no mortal effort can imitate or approach. 
For all our artificial pigments are, even when 
under the same circumstances, dead and lifeless 
beside her living color; the green of a growing 
leaf, the scarlet of a fresh flower, no art nor expe- 
dient can reach. 

4 4 4 

€1 The loveliest colors ever granted to human 
sight, those of morning and of evening clouds 
before or after rain, are produced in minute 
particles of finely divided water, or perhaps 
sometimes ice. 

90 



C There are three things to which man is 
bom — labor and sorrow and joy. Each of these 
three things has its baseness and its nobleness. 
There is base labor, and noble labor. There is 
base sorrow, and noble sorrow. There is base 
joy, and noble joy. Bat yoti mtist not think to 
avoid the corrtiption of these things by doing 
withotrt the things themselves. Nor can any 
life be right that has not all three. Labor with- 
out joy is base. Labor without sorrow is base. 
Sorrow without labor is base. Joy without 
labor is base. 

4 4 4 

C Only iti proportion as we draw near to 
God, and are made in measure like unto Him, 
can we increase our possession of charity, of 
which the entire essence is in God only. 

4 4 4 

C I do not say it is possible for men to agree 
with each other in their religious opinions, but 
it is certainly possible for them to agree with 
each other upon their religious expressions. 

4 4 4 

C There is not a moment of a man's active 
life in which he may not be indirectly preaching, 
and teaching both strangers and friends; his 
children, his servants, and all who are in any 

9\ 



way ptrt tmder him, being given to him as 
especial objects of his ministration. 

^ ftk ^ 

<t The best prayer at the beginning of a day 
is that we may not lose its moments. 

«l «l «l 

C Ascending from lowest to highest, through 
every scale of human industry, that industry 
worthily followed, gives peace. Ask the laborer 
in the field, at the forge, or in the mine; ask the 
patient, delicate-fingered artisan, or the strong- 
armed, fiery-hearted worker in bronze and in 
marble, and with the colors of light; and none 
of these who are true workmen, will ever tell 
you, that they have found the law of heaven an 
tmkind one — that in the sweat of their face 
they should eat bread, till they return to the 
ground; nor that they ever found it an unre- 
warded obedience, if indeed it were rendered 
faithfully to the command — ii Whatsoever thy 
hand f indeth to do rr- do it with thy might*^' 

4 4 « 

C If a man spends lavishly on his library, you 
call him mad — a biblio-maniac. But you 
never call any one a horse-maniac, though men 
ruin themselves every day by their horses, and 
you do not hear of people ruining themselves by 
their books, 

92 



C We talk of food for the mind, as of food 
for the body; now a good book contains stich 
food inexhaustibly; it is a provision for life, and 
for the best part of as; yet how long most people 
wodd look at the best book before they would 
give the price of a large turbot for it! 

K| m td 

C No book is worth anything which is not 
worth much; nor is it serviceable, until it has 
been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved 
again; and marked, so that you can refer to the 
passages you want in it, as a soldier can seize the 
weapon he needs in an armory, or a housewife 
bring the spice she needs from her store. 

tft «l # 

d Books! — the value of them consists first, 
in their power of preserving and communicating 
the knowledge of facts — secondly in their power 
of exciting vital or noble emotions and intel- 
lectual action. 

^ ^ ^ 

tl "Wheresoever the search after truth begins, 
there life begins; wheresoever that search ends, 
there life ceases. 

4 id 4 

C We are all of us willing enough to accept 
dead truths or blunt ones; which can be fitted 
harmlessly into spare niches. . . . But a sapling 

93 



truth, with earth at its root and blossom on its 
branches; or a trenchant truth that can ctit 
its way through bars and sods; most men, it 
seems to me, dislike the sight or entertainment 
of, if by any means such guest or vision may be 
avoided. 

# m it 

C Let the accent of words be watched by 
all means, but let their meaning be watched 
more closely still, and fewer will do the work* 

ti 4 ^ 

C A few words well chosen and well distin- 
guished, will do work that a thousand cannot, 
when every one is acting, equivocally, in the 
function of another. 

K| 1% 4 

C The Divine law, instead of being contrary 
to|mercy, is the foundation of all delight, and 
the guide of all fair and fortunate existence. 
« * td 

C It is one thing to indulge in playful rest, 
and another to be devoted to the pursuit of 
pleasure; and gaiety of heart during the reaction 
after hard labor, and quickened by satisfaction 
in the accomplished duty or perfected result, is 
altogether compatible with, nay, even in some 
sort arises naturally out of a deep internal seri- 
ousness of disposition. 

94 



C The highest and healthiest state which is 
competent to ordinary humanity appears to be 
that which, accepting the necessity of recreation 
and yielding to the impulse of natural delight 
springing out of health and innocence, does 
indeed, condescend often to playfulness, but 
never without such deep love of God, of truth, 
and of humanity as shall make even its slightest 
word reverent, its idlest fancies profitable, and 
its keenest satire indulgent^ 

4 4 td 

€[ A healthy manner of play is necessary in 
order to a healthy manner of work* 

tl Every faculty of man's soul, and every 
instinct of it by which he is meant to live, is 
exposed to its own special form of corruption; 
and whether within Man, or in the external world, 
there is a power or condition of temptation 
which is perpetually endeavoring to reduce every 
glory of his soul, and every power of his life, to 
such corruption as is possible to them. And 
the more beautiful they are, the more fearful 
is the death which is attached as a penalty to 
their degradation. 

4 4 4 

€[ As the flower is gnawed by frost, so every 
human heart is gnawed by faithlessness. And 

95 



as surely — as irrevocably — as the fruit-bud 
falls before the east wind, so fails the power of 
the kindest human heart if you meet it with 
poison* 

m « 1% 

C The feelings of the purest and most might- 
ily passioned human souls are likely to be the 
truest. Not, indeed, if they do not desire to 
know the truth, or blind themselves to it that 
they may please themselves with passion; for 
then they are no longer pure; but if continually 
seeking and accepting the truth as far as it is 
discernible, they trust their Maker for the in- 
tegrity of the instincts He has gifted them with, 
and rest in the sense of a higher truth which 
they cannot demonstrate, I think they will be 
most in the right so. 

4 4 K| 

C Ve should be afraid of doing wrong, and of 
that only, otherwise, if we only don't do wrong 
for fear of being punished, we have done wrong 
in our hearts already. 

4 « K| 

C Let us beware that our rest become not the 
rest of stones, which so long as they are torrent- 
tossed, and thunder-stricken, maintain their 

96 



majesty, but when the stream is silent, and the 
storm passed, suffer the grass to cover them, 
and the lichen to feed on them, and are ploughed 
down into dust* 



97 



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